Americanas: minority shareholders try to block directors’ assets – 02/01/2023 – Market

In yet another action related to the Americanas crisis, a group of minority shareholders asks the Public Prosecutor’s Office of São Paulo to block assets and dismiss directors and directors of the company from their duties, which filed for bankruptcy to settle a debt of R$ 43 billion.

They also ask for the breach of telephone secrecy of the administrators and the investigation also on the reference shareholders and on the audit firm PwC, responsible for analyzing the company’s financial results.

“It is impossible to deny the existence of robust evidence regarding the hypothesis of intentional withholding of crucial information about the company’s financial condition, with the aim of manipulating the market to obtain undue profits”, says the request signed by the Daniel Gerber Advocacia firm.

The crisis began with the announcement of the discovery of “accounting inconsistencies” in the company’s balance sheet, which would not be adequately accounting for loans taken out with banks to anticipate the payment of suppliers.

The announcement, on January 11, started a legal battle with the creditor banks and culminated with the request for judicial recovery eight days later.

The suspected omission of relevant information about the company’s real financial situation is already investigated by the CVM (Securities and Exchange Commission), in a process that also involves the reference shareholders, the trio of billionaires Jorge Paulo Lemann, Beto Sicupira and Marcel Telles.

In another lawsuit filed by Bradesco, the Justice of São Paulo authorized inspections of Americanas’ computers in search of evidence of fraud, despite the company’s appeal to preserve the privacy of its executives.

“The magnitude of the amounts involved is undeniable, with strong indications of fraud, a scenario in which the constitutional guarantees of intimacy and privacy must be relativized”, says the request made by the minority shareholders to the Public Ministry.

The Americanas crisis started a series of lawsuits filed by minority shareholders who lost their investments with the melting of the retailer’s market value. In addition to the company’s management, PwC and the CVM are targets.

Some of these lawsuits are seeking shareholders to join class-action lawsuits, both in Brazil and in the United States.