Americanas closes a store every 2.5 days – 10/01/2023 – Market

Americanas, a retail chain with declared debts of R$42.5 billion, closed 95 stores between January 19th, when its judicial recovery began, until September 17th.

In eight months, the company closed the operations of one store every 2.5 days, on average. Currently, the retailer has 1,785 points of sale. In January, there were 1,880.

The data appears in a monthly monitoring report by the retailer’s judicial administrators, sent to the CVM (Securities Commission) this Sunday (1st).

According to the document, Americanas currently has 16 eviction actions underway due to non-payment.

Debts with landlords have resulted in Americanas being evicted from two shopping malls: Plaza Sul, in the south zone of the capital of São Paulo, managed by Allos (merger of brMalls and Aliansce Sonae), and Vitória, in the capital of Espírito Santo, under administration Nova Cidade Shopping Centers.

“It is important to inform that the companies under recovery spoke again on id. 6 2925086, informing that the stores located in the Plaza Sul shopping centers, in Jabaquara/SP, and Nova Cidade, in Vitória/ES, had their forced evictions carried out, also noting that currently the recoveries have 16 (sixteen) ongoing eviction actions due to non-payment of bankruptcy credits, reporting that, in some of these cases, they deposited the amounts charged in court”, says an excerpt from the judicial administrator’s report.

As for the number of employees dismissed in the last four weeks (between August 21st and September 17th), the report points out that they total 1,131 (of this total, 639 were resignations).

According to the company, Americanas had 34,369 employees on September 17. This number, however, is higher than the 33,948 employees that the company said it had on August 20th.

Questioned by SheetAmericanas stated in a note that “the number of employees follows the seasonal dynamics of retail and that the numbers of layoffs and requests to leave in August are equivalent to the same period of the previous year, to date”.

The company reinforced that it recently announced the opening of 1,200 temporary vacancies for Black Friday and Christmas — this hiring process, however, began on September 18th.

“The company continues to focus on maintaining its operations and increasing its efficiency and reinforces its commitment to transparency in its relationship with unions and the full and timely fulfillment of its labor obligations, in accordance with current legislation”, he stated.

CPI ended without finding culprits

The crisis at the retailer began on the night of January 11, when Americanas disclosed in material fact “accounting inconsistencies” of around R$20 billion in its balance sheets.

On June 13, five months after one of the biggest corporate scandals in Brazilian history came to light, the retailer admitted that there had been fraud in its balance sheets.

Report prepared by legal advisors who have been following Americanas since it entered into judicial recovery pointed out that the retailer’s financial statements were being defrauded by the company’s previous management, which inflated its results by R$25.3 billion — this was the fictitious accumulated profit over the last few years (the company has not yet stated how many years).

On the 25th, the CPI (Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry) that was investigating Americanas ended its activities without finding any culprits.

With the approval of the report by 18 votes in favor, compared to 8 votes against, the text, authored by deputy Carlos Chiodini (MDB-SC), did not identify those responsible for the “accounting inconsistencies” and was limited to making suggestions for legislative improvements.

According to Chiodini, it was not possible to define, “precisely, the authorship of the identified facts nor to attribute the respective criminal, civil or administrative responsibility to specific institutions or people”.