Justice suspends decision pro-creditors of Americanas – 06/04/2023 – Market

Judge José Carlos Maldonado de Carvalho, from the Court of Justice of Rio de Janeiro, suspended this Wednesday (5) a decision that benefited Americanas’ creditors by extending the deadline for foreclosures on the retailer’s debts.

The decision had been obtained in a lawsuit filed by Banco Safra and established January 19 as the deadline for executions, annulling an injunction granted to the retailer guaranteeing protection against creditors from January 13.

With the decision, Safra was trying to recover R$ 95 million loaned to Americanas. The bank is one of the retailer’s biggest creditors, with a total of R$ 2.5 billion to be received. In all, the retailer owes R$ 19.5 billion to private banks.

In this Wednesday’s injunction, Judge Carvalho prohibits the raising of values ​​that have been released by the previous decision. He justified the injunction by claiming risk of irreversible damage.

Protection against creditors was obtained by the company shortly after the announcement of the discovery of accounting inconsistencies of R$ 20 billion in its balance sheet, as a kind of anticipation of the effects of a judicial recovery process.

According to the judge, this measure was aimed at the survival of Americanas and the successful recovery of the company.

At the time, he says, “a pre-bankruptcy state was announced which recommended the anticipation of some of the effects of the judicial reorganization, especially in view of the enormous number of shareholders, customers, suppliers and jobs involved in the business”.

“This scenario still seems to last”, concludes the judge.

Since the announcement of the accounting inconsistencies, Americanas has been involved in legal battles against the banks. Safra himself had already gone to court to try to prevent immediate payment to labor creditors and small suppliers, one of the measures announced after the company’s capitalization proposal.

Santander and Bradesco also fought in court to gain access to the company’s executives’ e-mails in order to produce evidence that there was fraud in their management.

At the end of March, shortly before the presentation of the judicial recovery plan, however, one of the firmest creditors, BTG Pactual, began to lay down its arms and asked for the suspension of the processing of seven appeals in the Justice of Rio de Janeiro against the retailer .

In early April, the trio of Brazilian billionaires Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira, owners of the private equity firm 3G and reference shareholders of Americanas, signaled an investment of R$ 12 billion in the retailer to try to overcome the crisis. .

A significant contribution to cover part of the gap was demanded by the banks since the scandal came to light in January. They started demanding BRL 16 billion, but some were already accepting BRL 12 billion.

Banco Safra said it “does not comment on a sub-judice matter”.