Bradesco manages to ‘mark’ the equity of more Americanas directors – 03/22/2023 – Market

The 11th Civil Court of São Paulo accepted a request from Bradesco in the fight with Americanas and determined the inclusion of a “notification of protest” in movements that former members of the board of directors of the group may make in their assets.

The judicial protest action works as a type of “notice to the square”, in which any movement of assets will be accompanied by an alert that, for example, that property may be seized (a type of preventive blocking of an asset for payment debt) in the future.

The decision released this Wednesday (22) affects Cecília Sicupira Giusti, Love Goel, José Maria Rios Castellano, Ruy Villela Moraes Abreu, Paulo Veiga Ferraz Pereira and Roberto Thompson Motta.

When contacted, Americanas said it would check if the company would comment, but did not return until the publication of this text.

The determination is similar to another obtained by the bank at the beginning of the month from the 22nd Civil Court. At that time, the judicial protest action affected Americanas’ fiscal councilors – Carlos Alberto de Souza, Pedro Carvalho de Mello, Peter Edward Cortes Marsden Wilson, Ricardo Scalzo and Vicente Antonio de Castro Ferreira.

The intention is to create obstacles to negotiations and disposals of assets, since the buyer is warned of the risk, avoiding what the bank considers to be a threat of “patrimonial emptiness” of former directors.

The request is part of Bradesco’s strategy, represented in the action by Warde Advogados, to try to access the personal assets of the trio of shareholders – billionaires Jorge Paulo Lemann, Beto Sicupira and Marcel Telles– to compensate for the bank’s loss with the group’s judicial recovery .

This Thursday’s decision also affects the assets of Sicupira’s daughter, who left the board of directors in 2020, the same year he left the presidency of the collegiate. Thompson Motta is a partner of the trio of billionaires at private investment firm 3G Capital.

Bradesco is the chain’s biggest creditor, with R$5.1 billion, according to the retailer informed the court. The bank is also the author of a request for advance evidence, through which it tries to determine the performance of expertise on emails exchanged by directors, directors and employees of the accounting and finance areas of Americanas.

Through this inspection, the bank intends to prove that the accounting inconsistencies that resulted in the retailer’s current crisis were due to fraud and that this happened with the knowledge of the reference shareholders.

The carrying out of these investigations is suspended by order of Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the STF (Federal Supreme Court), who complied with a request from Americanas. The company defended that the access to the emails put at risk the secrecy between lawyer and client.

At the end of Monday night (20), Americanas presented its judicial recovery plan, with the first version of its proposed payment to creditors.

The company plans to invest BRL 10 billion through the issuance of shares, debentures or a DIP loan (debt-in-possesion financing). With the sale of Natural da Terra hortifruti, the companies of the Uni.co group (which includes Imaginarium and Puket) and an Embraer executive jet, the retailer calculates that it will raise from R$ 2 billion to R$ 3 billion.