After pressure from the government, Vale decides to change president at the end of the year

Vale’s board of directors decided on Friday (8), in an extraordinary meeting, that the current president, Eduardo Bartolomeo, will not be reappointed to the position. However, an extension of his mandate was defined, which would end in May, until December 31st of this year.

According to the company, the choice of the new president, who will occupy the role from 2025, “must consider the attributes and profile necessary for the position in light of the Company’s strategy and future challenges”. The board of directors will have the support of an “international standard” human resources company.

The succession of the executive, considered a technical member of the company, has turned into a soap opera since the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) began pressure to place former Finance Minister Guido Mantega in office, last year. .

The name had a negative impact on the market because it did not meet the company’s governance criteria and, at the end of January, the former minister himself gave up on the idea of ​​becoming president of the mining company.

Privatized almost three decades ago, Vale is a publicly traded company on B3, the Brazilian stock exchange. The government has indirect participation, through Previ, which is the pension fund for Banco do Brasil employees.

Last week, in an interview with RedeTV, Lula said that the mining company “does not own Brazil”. “Vale cannot think that it owns Brazil, it cannot think that it can do more than Brazil. So what we want is the following: Brazilian companies need to be in accordance with the Brazilian government’s development thinking. That’s what we want,” she said.

The government’s attempted interference in the company caused a split in the board. An extraordinary meeting of the company’s board to deliberate on the issue, on February 15th, ended without consensus. At the time, six councilors voted to leave the executive, while another six voted to remain in office, and one abstained.

This time, of the 13 directors, only Paulo Hartung and José Luciano Penido, considered independent and resistant to Brasília’s influence in the company, voted against Bartolomeo’s departure from office.

According to the newspaper “Folha de S.Paulo”, the names of Murilo Ferreira, who previously held the presidency of Vale, and Paulo Caffarelli, former president of Cielo and former executive secretary of the Ministry of Finance in PT governments.

The decision to extend Bartolomeo’s mandate by seven months would have taken into account the fact that there was not enough time to choose a new name and begin the transition process by May.

In a statement, the chairman of Vale’s board of directors, Daniel Stieler, thanked the executive for his work, who had been leading the company since 2019, initially on an interim basis.

“We are immensely grateful for Eduardo’s commitment and dedication over the last five years and we will work together until the end of his term. We will continue to conduct the succession process diligently and strictly comply with the company’s internal policies”, declared Stieler.