In the sights of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) due to the high dividends of Petrobras, the minority shareholders of the state-owned company are a pulverized and heterogeneous group, which includes banks, retirees and even workers who bought shares with the FGTS (Fundo de Garantia do Tempo de Serviço). ).
In April 2022, the company had 718,185 individual shareholders, 5,931 legal entities and 2,949 institutional investors, according to a reference form filed with the CVM (Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission).
The largest private shareholder, the American asset manager Blackrock, holds just 2.15% of the company’s total capital. The shares, however, belong to individual investors or funds that invest in their products.
Minority shareholders became the president’s target in the midst of the crisis caused by the troubled changes of command at Petrobras, which resists holding fuel prices.
“Most of the minority [são] pension fund companies in the United States that earn an average of R$ 6 billion per month. Money from you who put fuel in cars”, he said, on the 18th. “It turned Petrobras football club to its president, directors, directors and said minority.”
The government has 28.7% of the total capital, but controls the company by having 50.2% of the common shares, those with the right to vote at a shareholders’ meeting. With this share, it is the biggest recipient of dividends and manages to win any vote, but it has been having problems in the election of directors.
It also receives dividends through the shares of BNDES (National Bank for Economic and Social Development), which correspond to 7.94% of the capital. As a result, it kept BRL 37 billion of the BRL 101 billion distributed by the company in 2021, a year in which Petrobras’ profits and dividends were record.
The remainder was paid to minority shareholders. It is not possible to calculate how much each private investor received, as investment managers have a huge variety of clients, which include individuals, companies and pension funds from all over the world.
Even with pulverized participation, however, they mobilize to participate in the management of the company, which reserves 2 of the 11 seats on the board of directors to representatives of minority shareholders. A third is reserved for workers’ representatives.
The biggest individual shareholder, with 1.84% of the common shares, the banker João José Abdalla Filho, known as Juca Abdalla, for example, got support from other investors to advance on the seats previously occupied by government appointees.
He got the first one in 2020, with the appointment of lawyer Leonardo Antonelli. At the state-owned company’s last shareholders’ meeting, in April, he got two seats, one for himself and the other for Marcelo Gasparino.
Without referring specifically to the case of Petrobras, the president of Amec (Association of Capital Market Investors), Fábio Coelho, says that minority shareholders try to represent themselves on boards to influence decision-making power in search of greater generation of long-term value.
“Brazil is one of the countries where the number of companies with a controlling shareholder is high, in general a family group or the federal or state government itself”, he says. “Minority shareholders represent the other partners in the companies, and who do not have the power to decide alone the direction of the companies, but they can influence the decision-making process.”
He points out that, in recent years, the participation of international groups influencing companies has been growing in the country to encourage modern management practices or review their social function. “We are talking not only about better governance, but also about deepening the socio-environmental agenda.”
At Petrobras, minority shareholders have been a counterpoint to the government, monitoring compliance with the rules established in the company’s statute and in the State-Owned Companies Law. Therefore, Bolsonaro proposed the election of a more aligned council, with many occupants of public offices, in the next assembly.
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