Opinion – Vinicius Torres Freire: The loss of the Americanas is still incalculable and the worker will pay the bill

Americanas may have somewhere between 40,000 and 44,000 employees. “Perhaps”, because who knows what is true in all those accountability documents. The company had probably been in the deep red for a long time, not delivering results, outside of fat shareholders and executives. And?

If it had taken the course five or ten years ago, when the mumunha mandraque in the balance sheets may have started, maybe the company could have the size it has today. As its results were a fantastic serial, this Americanas the size of until another day was a fiction.

With the disclosure of the scam in the accounts, with much less credit, if any, with distrust of suppliers, etc., to put it mildly, the company will have to be dehydrated or freeze-dried.

So, a lot of people take to the streets, who knows if they have paid their labor rights. The blow will also hit some service providers and store tenants. With establishments in at least 900 cities, the collapse of Americanas should have an impact on local, neighborhood businesses.

A part of the assistance bill for the disinherited by the total turkey (to put it mildly) will be covered by tax money, which will pay unemployment insurance. The account will also be hit by a public bank result, taxes that go to vinegar, etc.

If the company survives, the massacre of workers and small people in general who depend on it will be smaller the more money it receives, obviously from the remaining major shareholders, Jorge Paulo Lemann, Carlos Alberto Sicupira and Marcel Telles. How much money is it anyway?

In the last 15 days, it was said that, according to creditor banks, the trio of shareholders should put R$ 15 billion from their own pockets in the company.

One bank says that this is not quite the case, basically because there is no way to correctly calculate the size of the hole or what perspective you want to give to Americanas. Did the company generate cash? For now, not even that can be known, says the bank executive. What is known about the viability of the operation, current or future? How big was the degradation of the brand; how much will such damage affect customer confidence?

First of all, how to keep the company operating? That is to say, how to get credit to buy goods and have something to sell? It’s that simple. Without that, there is no retailer. What kind of retailer would she be if blood transfusion kept her alive?

How big could the new company be after “deep restructuring”? Would you abandon physical stores? What assets would you sell? How much credit (financing your purchases) would you have, in the medium and long term? At what price?

After negotiating the size of the default (debt relief), how much of the debt could be transformed into participation (shares) in the company? Who would want to take the risk, with which management?

Depending on these definitions and perspectives (in addition to the level of compliance of creditors), the company may need BRL 15 billion, BRL 20 billion or BRL 25 billion from its largest shareholders.

Anyway, this is a discussion between theoretical and speculative. This Thursday, Justice authorized the seizure of all the company’s documents and communications over the last ten years. Who knows what kind of skeleton, leak, pedaling, crime or gang formation can appear. The freak show has barely begun.

At the very least, at best, the company will be dehydrated: it survives diminished, with a lot of workers kicked out.

At the very least, Americanas was a mess run by incapables (the alternative is that the company was a mess run by criminals).