Read this Monday’s edition of the FolhaMercado newsletter (23) – 01/23/2023 – Market

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Trio speaks for the 1st time

In its first public manifestation since the Americanas accounting scandal broke, the trio of billionaires who are the company’s main shareholders said that they never knew nor would admit any accounting maneuvers or dissimulations in the company.

Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicupira, who own 31% of the company, have been pressured since the beginning of the crisis by creditors to put at least BRL 15 billion to get the company out of trouble, but they waved an amount of about BRL 6 billion.

In the note, provided by the Brazil Journal website, the shareholders say that Americanas was managed by executives considered qualified and of unblemished reputation over the last 20 years, and that it had one of the largest and most respected independent auditing firms in the world, PwC.

• They claim that, as shareholders, they too have been “hit by losses”. Read the document in full here.

Who are they: Lemann, Telles and Sicupira have been working together since the 1970s, when they met at Banco Garantia and were part of the creation of the financial market in Brazil.

Due to their work in 3G, a fund through which they became relevant shareholders in AB Inbev, the largest brewery in the world, in the food giant Kraft Heinz and in Americanas, they became the most respected and admired trio of Brazilian investors in the market – a vision that was shaken by the scandal in Americanas.

The crisis for minorities: business administrator André Krizak told the Sheet who invested a good part of his savings –”more than BRL 40 thousand“– in Americanas stocks on January 11, hours before the “inconsistencies” surfaced.

• Between the date of purchase and today, he lost R$65,000 on the papers. “I felt ripped off,” said Krizak. “I bought the share for R$ 12 and now it is worth less than R$ 1, a bullet price”.

And in everyday life? In an attempt to calm customers, Americanas said that its operations were not affected, that sales are also normal on its websites and that the amounts are being passed on to “sellers” – third-party sellers.

Opinion: Shares of companies undergoing judicial recovery become “papers of events”, writes columnist Marcos de Vasconcellos.

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RendA+: the new Treasury bond

A new Treasury bond will be released to investors from the 30th of this month. This is RendA+, aimed at those who want to save for retirement.

Understand: the idea is that the investor applies the funds for a certain period and then receives a monthly amount for 20 years. The product will be pegged to inflation plus a real interest rate, known at the time of investment.

• The initial offer provides for eight conversion date options (when the person starts receiving investment income): 2030, 2035, 2040, 2045, 2050, 2055, 2060 and 2065.

• Among the attractions are the low cost of administering the title and the possibility of payment via Pix, in addition to the minimum amount of R$ 30 for application.

• For the experts consulted by the Sheetthe short period of earnings received –20 years– in comparison with private pension options –which can reach lifelong income– take away part of the attractiveness of the investment.

More about fixed income investments…

• Ever heard of FIDCs? Credit rights funds are invested in company receivables (see an example here). Previously restricted to professional and qualified investors, they will be released to the general public in April.

...and variable income

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Startup of the Week: Parfin

On Mondays, the chart shows an x-ray of a startup that recently received funding.

The startup: founded in 2019, in Rio, it also has an office in London and provides web3 infrastructure for companies.

In numbers: Parfin announced last week that it had received a contribution of $15 million (BRL 78 million) in a seed round (understand here the stages of investment in startups).

Who invested: The contribution was led by Framework Ventures, a Silicon Valley fund in San Francisco (USA), focused on the digital asset market. L4 Venture Builder, B3’s investment vehicle, Valor Capital Group and Alexia Ventures also participated in the round.

What problem does it solve? The startup provides three alternatives to help companies enter the world of digital assets:

• A service for banks and brokerages to offer cryptocurrency transaction options on their platforms;

• A custody solution for these assets so they are kept separate from brokerage or bank balance sheets;

• A terminal to facilitate the management and transaction of digital assets for funds operating in this market.

Why it stands out: the volume raised by Parfin, in addition to being one of the largest announced by startups in the last week, draws attention for being in a seed round, in which contributions are usually smaller – even more so in the current scenario.

• As a comparison, the average investment in seed rounds announced by Brazilian startups last year was $2 millionaccording to data from the SlingHub platform.

The week in summary

There were four contributions announced by Latin American startups in the last week, with US$ 143 million (R$ 743 million) raised.

The data was provided by the Sling Hub platform.

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Layoffs at Google

Meta, Microsoft, Amazon…and Alphabet. Google’s parent company is the latest big tech to announce a mass layoff, which will hit 12 thousand employees, the company announced on Friday (20).

Alphabet’s job losses affect teams across the company, including recruiting and corporate functions, as well as engineering and product teams. Layoffs are global.

Among the FAANGan acronym known for bringing together some of the most relevant big techs (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google), only Apple has not announced a wave of layoffs in the current sector crisis.

• The company’s shares are also the least retreated since the beginning of last year, following a resilient consumer demand for its products, especially the iPhone.

Clash of generations: if for many millennials and generation Z who work in technology this cut may represent the first dismissal of their lives, those of the “baby boom” generation and generation X, born between 1946 and 1980, treat it as yet another crisis in the sector.

• They were in the workforce during the dot-com crash at the turn of the millennium, which wiped out 1 million jobs. From 2001 to 2005, the technology sector laid off a quarter of workers.

• The baby boomers’ view of the current wave being a kind of “little wave” is echoed by specialists, for whom the current cuts, for the time being, still represent a reversal of the explosion in hiring in the post-pandemic period.