What Americanas former CEO told Brazil’s securities regulator
Americanas former CEO Miguel Gutierrez testified before the Securities and Exchange Commission of Brazil (CVM). Sources heard by Pipeline, Valor’s business website, help understand the arguments of the executive, who spoke for nearly four hours on Thursday.In general lines, Mr. Gutierrez deconstructs the logic expected for this investigation, that at some point there was an explicit and direct order - from him or to him - to distort the figures, nor that the model practiced in the company’s accounting was something secretly planned and distant from the board and bank creditors, but an accounting loophole exposed by high interest rates and sales decline. In this argument, the company would have transformed a financial problem into an accounting problem to transfer a problem from the shareholders to the administrators. Americanas, a traditional retail chain, revealed an accounting hole of R$20 billion on January 11.At this stage, the case is still a war of narratives. Together, they will show how each piece is positioned on this board - and how they will be shaped by the facts revealed by the ongoing investigations.According to people close to Mr. Gutierrez, if there was fraud, it was caused by the online operation, about which the executive, despite being the company’s chief executive, said he was not familiar with. Definitions of changes in accounting practices were attributions of the board, according to these sources, who cited the company’s bylaws. The merger of the online operation with the physical operation, in 2021, and the rise in interest rates in Brazil were the real culprits, according to these accounts."The mandate he always got from the controlling shareholders was to make the company grow. Grow, grow, and that was his goal, not profit. He came from the physical world and helped take the chain from 90 stores to 3,000," said a close source. "In the meantime, the owners decided to buy Submarino, which originated of B2W. He participated in this management team, but was not so comfortable with the matter because it was not his area of expertise and had a different dynamic, more dependent on credit." Mr. Gutierrez took over the company in 2001. Five years later, Americanas.com and Submarino merged, creating a more robust online business.His resignation, which reportedly was communicated by the board in 2019, was in line with the decision to reposition the company with a focus on e-commerce, and with this, a new structure was created...
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