Former CEO of bankrupt Brazilian Americanas says about problems of information disclosure
2023.03.28 13:36
Former CEO of bankrupt Brazilian Americanas says about problems of information disclosure
By Kristina Sobol
Budrigannews.com – On Tuesday, the former CEO of Americanas, a bankrupt Brazilian retailer, said that the company’s previous management had made it difficult to disclose information about the situation and the process of succession. Speaking at a Senate hearing about the retailer’s crisis, Sergio Rial, who led the company for less than two weeks before stepping down after it revealed accounting inconsistencies totaling approximately 3.9 billion reais, was speaking.
Leonardo Coelho Pereira, the current CEO of Americanas, and Isaac Ferreira, president of Brazil’s banks federation Febraban, were also present.
Rial asserts that the prior chief executive, Miguel Gutierrez, did not oversee the succession process and did not want him to attend the year-end management meetings.
He described Gutierrez, who worked at Americanas for approximately 30 years and served as CEO for approximately 20 years, as “a person with characteristics of a CEO, having been at the company for so long, a centralizer, in the sense that information was very well controlled, let’s say, by him together with his board.” Gutierrez was CEO for approximately 20 years.
Rial stated that he had 21 meetings with Gutierrez and that they shared a single store and distribution center visit.
He went on to say, “Never in a way that I could prospectively understand the size of the challenge, primarily financial that I would be encountering,” referring to the accounting issues that prompted the company to file for bankruptcy protection in January.
Americanas’ bank debt was not properly accounted for under the “banks” item on the balance sheet, according to Rial, who claimed that he learned of the accounting flaw on January 4.
Rial stated to the Senate economic affairs committee, “And, from that moment on, I was absolutely aware that the company had an insolvency equity structure.”
The executive said he tried to figure out where the inconsistencies came from but had trouble getting information once more.
“I extricated the data drop by drop a large number of days in a perpetual way with the previous CFO,” he expressed, adding there was no great reason for how it worked out.
In addition, the executive stated that the “reference shareholders” of the company—the billionaire trio that established 3G Capital—exhibited shock and surprise following the disclosure of the accounting irregularities.
Rial stated that top shareholders “will continue to give credibility to the company” and that he was certain of this.
