Read this Friday’s edition of the FolhaMercado newsletter (27) – 01/27/2023 – Market

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Investigation to investigate fraud

The Justice of São Paulo accepted Bradesco’s request and authorized experts to search and seize Americanas’ computers to obtain evidence and certify whether there was fraud in the retailer’s management.

• Other banks, such as Safra and Santander, also filed lawsuits with this objective and are awaiting a decision.

The strategy: financial institutions are looking for fraud in the management of Americanas to try in court to have the retailer’s debts paid by the personal assets of the trio of billionaires Lemann, Telles and Sicupira, the retailer’s reference shareholders and who are in a public clash with the banks.

• The bet is on disregarding the legal personality —an exceptional mechanism, provided for by law, which consists of ignoring the company’s patrimonial autonomy, in case of abusive or fraudulent conduct, so that its shareholders pay for losses with their own assets.

• The same tactic is used by the union centrals, which filed a public civil action asking for the blocking of R$ 1.53 billion from the trio’s personal account to guarantee that the labor actions against the retailer will be paid.

Other side: the trio of billionaires recently claimed to be unaware of the accounting flaws and said they were victims, like the other shareholders and creditors.

Understand the fight between banks and billionaires

• When the “inconsistencies” of BRL 20 billion came to light, the banks put pressure on the reference shareholders to put at least BRL 15 billion to get the company out of trouble, but they waved an amount of about BRL 6 billion.

• During the negotiation, the institutions were caught by surprise with an injunction that the retailer obtained in court. In practice, the decision advanced the effects of the judicial recovery and prevented banks from blocking their assets.

• The banks saw in the document an attempt to include them as co-responsible for the company’s irregular accounting practices.

Opinion: The hole in Americanas is still incalculable and workers will pay the bill, writes columnist Vinicius Torres Freire.

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BuzzFeed + ChatGPT

BuzzFeed Stock Soared 120% this Thursday after the Wall Street Journal published that the company will start using ChatGPT to personalize its content.

Understand: the AI ​​(artificial intelligence) tool would be used to improve the site’s characteristic quizzes, generating a new result from the responses of each user, said CEO Jonah Peretti, in a statement to employees.

• He also said he hopes AI will assist the creative process, not replace the role of employees, who will have the role of providing ideas and suggestions to the platform. BuzzFeed announced last month that it will cut about 12% of its workers.

In numbers: despite having more than doubled in value in one day, BuzzFeed stock is still down more than 70% since the company debuted on the Stock Exchange, at the end of 2021.

Also according to the WSJ, the company closed a deal last year with Meta of US$ 10 million to bring more content creators to Facebook and Instagram.

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take a break

The series about the creator of the largest financial pyramid in history, Bernie Madoff, debuted this month on Netflix and exposed the details of a scheme that lasted decades.

For those who enjoyed the plot, we have selected other series that tell the story of people and companies that got rich through scams or financial fraud.

• Inventing Anna: Anna Delvey outwitted New York high society by presenting herself as an heiress to a German family. Her story is told in a nine-episode series on Netflix.

• Bad Boys and Billionaires – India: documentary series shows how Indian tycoons corrupted institutions to form their empires and how they were overthrown for the same reasons. Available on Netflix.

Bonus – long:

• “The Wirecard Scandal”: the fintech that was worth 24 billion euros and became the darling of the German market went bankrupt after a sequence of frauds. Netflix documentary.

• The Wolf of Wall Street: The story of Jordan Belfort, who sold worthless stocks to retail investors at Stratton Oakmont, the brokerage firm he ran in the 1990s. Available on HBO Max.