From the east side of SP to Silicon Valley: Brazilian will be the new CEO of Slack

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The Brazilian who takes over Slack

The corporate communication platform Slack, based in Silicon Valley, will have a Brazilian CEO.

Executive Lidiane Jones will replace Stewart Butterfield, founder of the tool. He will leave the company in January 2023, just over two years after it was purchased by Salesforce, for $27.7 billion (BRL 145 billion at current exchange rates).

Who is Brazilian? Born in São Paulo on the east side, Lidiane holds a degree in computer science from the University of Michigan (USA) and worked at Apple, Microsoft –where she stayed for 13 years– and Sonos before joining Salesforce in 2019.

She also serves on the board of Compass, an NGO focused on helping low-income families led by black or Latino women develop alternatives to leave poverty.

• “Being a person who was very poor, I know that nobody wants others to feel sorry for them, nobody wants to be considered inferior to anyone,” she said in an interview on the institution’s website.

• “I found out about Compass through a friend’s recommendation, after I talked to her about what it was like to grow up in Brazil, and how my mother helped me overcome several challenges and put so much effort into helping me get an education,” said Lidiane.

Chair dancing: Butterfield’s departure comes less than a week after Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor resigned. Taylor was one of those responsible for the billionaire deal.

EU law may affect products from Brazil

The European Parliament approved this Tuesday (6) a law to prevent companies from selling to the EU market items such as coffee, beef, soy and other commodities linked to deforestation.

Understand: according to the measure, companies exporting these raw materials will have to trace their supply chain and show that the item sold is not related to areas of forest deforested after 2020 – even with legal permission.

• The information provided by the companies will need to be verifiable, with geographic coordinates of the products of origin, and ensure that the process was done in accordance with the laws in force in the country, such as the protection of the rights of indigenous peoples.

• Among the products that should go through this fine-tooth comb are important items for the Brazilian trade balance, such as soy and beef. Europe is the second largest consumer market for our commodities.

• Exporters who do not comply with the requirements may be fined up to 4% of their revenues with the EU.

Also included in the law were items such as palm oil, wood, cocoa, coffee, and some derivative products, including leather, chocolate and furniture.

Even if the regulation offers protection to the Amazon, the Atlantic forest and the chaco, the typical forest biomes of South America, environmentalists criticized the exclusion of the cerrado from the agreement.

Last year, the Brazilian chancellor, Carlos França, criticized the measure by saying that the EU “uses the environment as a form of commercial protectionism”. “It’s bad for consumers [e] for trade flows,” he told the Financial Times.

Next steps: the regulation needs to be formally approved by MEPs and the Council.

• After the law takes effect, large companies and traders have 18 months to comply, and small companies 24 months.

Petrobras cuts fuel prices

Petrobras has announced that it will reduce starting this Wednesday (7th) the prices of gasoline and diesel sold by its refineries in 6.1% and 8.2%respectively.

After spending weeks selling items in Brazil with a lag compared to abroad, where prices rose, the state-owned company now makes the first price change in three months, in the case of gasoline, and in more than two months, in the case of diesel .

During the campaign for the first round of elections, Petrobras had been making announcements drop by drop in fuel prices, but suspended the strategy when oil prices started to rise in the campaign for the second round.

In numbers: gasoline sold by Petrobras refineries will go from R$ 3.28 to BRL 3.08 per liter, while diesel starts at $4.89 for BRL 4.49 per litre.

• At gas stations, gasoline savings should be lower, given the mixture of fuel with anhydrous ethanol.

The recent drop in stock prices of oil abroad made the fuels sold by Petrobras to be traded in Brazil at a higher price compared to abroad.

• At the opening of the market this Tuesday (6), the average price of gasoline in Brazilian refineries was 8% (R$ 0.24 per liter) above par. The difference for diesel was the same –8%, or R$0.34 per liter. The calculations are from the association of importers.

• This Tuesday, Brent fell 3.2%, to a level below US$ 80, at the lowest price in a year.

Microsoft tries to avoid problems

To try to avoid regulatory questions in the purchase of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft offered Sony that the releases of the “Call of Duty” franchise be available on PlayStation and Xbox at the same time for ten years.

The news was confirmed by the president of the American company in an article published in the Wall Street Journal.

Which explains: Sony (from Playstation) has defended the veto of the authorities to the deal between Activision (producer of “Call of Duty”) and Microsoft (from Xbox).

• Announced in January, the transaction of $69 billion (R$ 361.9 billion) was the largest in the history of the games sector.

“The main perceived anti-competitive risk that Sony raises would be the end of availability of “Call of Duty” on the PlayStation. But that would be economically irrational,” said Microsoft President Brad Smith in the Wall Street Journal article.

The president of Sony’s games division said in September that Microsoft had made an offer to keep “CoD” on the PlayStation for just three years, which the Japanese company did not like.

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