Petrobras: council rejects two Lula nominees – 03/28/2023 – Market

After negative opinions from the internal committee, Petrobras’ board of directors rejected two government nominations for the renewal of the collegiate, which will be evaluated at a shareholders’ meeting at the end of April.

The rejection is a defeat for the Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, who was criticized by unions and allies of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) during the process of drawing up the list of names that will replace the elected council still in government. Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

The names considered ineligible are the Secretary of Oil and Gas of the MME, Pietro Mendes, and the ex-minister Sergio Machado Rezende, who is leader of the PSB. In both cases, the committee responsible for analyzing the curricula claimed prohibitions stipulated by the State-Owned Companies Law.

Called Cope (People’s Committee), the group is made up of four members of the board of directors and one independent member.

In his opinion on Mendes, he evaluated that he does not incur prohibitions, as long as he resigns from his position at the MME. Based on the committee’s assessment, the board of directors decided, by majority, for the ineligibility.

With regard to Rezende, Cope considered that he is ineligible for participating in a political party directory, which is prohibited by law and by the company’s bylaws. The decision was followed by all directors who voted at the meeting.

The government, however, can insist on appointments. In 2022, Bolsonaro overruled the council’s decision and kept the names of the then number two in the Civil House, Jonathas Assunção, and the attorney general of the National Treasury, Ricardo Soriano.

Both had been vetoed by the council, but were elected by the government in an assembly based on a legal opinion that considers that the position of the internal bodies is consultative and not decisive.

The government already anticipated resistance to Silveira’s list and nominated eleven people for the eight vacancies in dispute. In a voting manual for the assembly, Petrobras informs that four other names were approved by the council.

The list includes the president of the state company, Jean Paul Prates; the director of ANA (National Water and Sanitation Agency), Vitor Saback; economist linked to PT Bruno Moretti; and Suzana Kahn Ribeiro, who was Secretary of Climate Change at the Ministry of the Environment in the second Lula administration.

Cope has not yet concluded its analysis of the other nominees.

Once again, the government will face competition from Petrobras’ largest individual shareholder, banker João José Abdalla Filho, known as Juca Abdalla, owner of Banco Clássico. He and lawyer Marcelo Gasparino will compete for vacancies on the board.

The two are already members of the collegiate, in vacancies conquered in the last shareholders’ meetings. With the support of other minorities, the two were left with two seats that were normally occupied by Union nominees.

Petrobras’ board has 11 members. Two vacancies are reserved for representatives of minority shareholders and one for representatives of the company’s employees. These vacancies will not be changed at the April meeting.

It is the body responsible for approving the strategic direction of the state-owned company and, until the April meeting, is made up of nominees still in the Bolsonaro government, with the exception of Prates, who was elected at the end of January so that he could take over the company.

The government expects the renewal of the collegiate to print its mark in charge of the company, which has spent the last few years streamlining its activities, keeping focus on the pre-salt layer and on remuneration to shareholders —in 2022, it was the second company that distributed the most dividends in the world .

The Lula government wants to resume investments in areas abandoned by previous administrations, returning to using the state-owned company as an industrial development instrument, and changing the fuel price policy.