The mystery of Americanas’ missing billions
A $3.9bn financial hole, a chief executive gone after less than two weeks on the job, a trio of billionaires under fire from banks, and a Big Four auditor that appears to have missed the signs ...
Americanas, the century-old Brazilian retailer, had been keen to modernise its operations and keep pace with more tech-savvy rivals. But the sweeping accounting scandal enveloping the group, which has plunged the company into bankruptcy and shaken corporate Brazil, isn’t quite the exposure it had been hoping for.
The FT’s Bryan Harris broke down the debacle earlier this week: it all began in January when Americanas’ brand new chief Sérgio Rial — the former CEO and chair of Santander Brasil — abruptly quit alongside chief financial officer Andre Covre after the company reported accounting “inconsistencies” of more than R$20bn ($3.9bn).
As its share price plunged, a bitter fight broke out between Americanas — long controlled by private equity firm 3G Capital’s billionaire founders Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicupira — and its creditors, which include Banco Bradesco and investment bank BTG Pactual.
BTG, which had been forbidden by a Rio court from seizing assets, was quick to launch grenades at Americanas’ powerful shareholders.
“The three richest men in Brazil (with assets valued at R$180bn), anointed as kind of demigods of ‘good’ world capitalism, are caught with their hands in the cash register,” said BTG lawyers in a filing to the court.
Following a two-week standstill, and days after Americanas filed for bankruptcy protection, the three men came out with a statement that they hadn’t been aware of accounting issues at the company and would never support such “manoeuvres”.
One of their main lines of defence: The retailer had employed one of the “most respected independent auditing firms in the world, PwC”, which signed off on Americanas’ last full set of accounts in 2021.
The Brazilian Association of Investors, aka Abradin, has called for regulators to investigate Americanas and PwC, calling the scandal a “multibillion fraud”. PwC declined to comment on any aspect of the case including the fraud allegations.
But probes by Brazil’s Securities Commission, known as the CVM, could take months if not years, as the agency grapples with steep budget cuts.
The scandal has amplified scrutiny on Americanas’ three billionaire backers. The trio rose to fame in the late 1980s after acquiring Brazilian brewer Brahma, which they then parlayed into the world’s largest beer company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, after three decades of aggressive dealmaking.
Lemann, Telles and Sicupira remain controlling shareholders of AB InBev. (Fun fact: as a young executive at Shell in Brazil, AB InBev’s former boss Carlos Brito convinced Lemann to fund his MBA at Stanford.) Through 3G, they also hold stakes in Kraft Heinz and the holding company that controls Burger King.
Until the scandal at Americanas, the three financiers seemed to be gradually bowing out of the spotlight. Lemann, a former Brazilian tennis champion, stepped down from Kraft Heinz’s board in 2021 at the age of 81.
Now, Americanas’ creditors are threatening to go after the 3G founders’ personal wealth if they don’t come up with the cash to rescue the company, Bloomberg reported last week.
Analysts say their kingmaker reputations in Brazil could be at risk.
Said Geraldo Affonso Ferreira, chair of asset manager ESH Capital’s advisory board: “It raises questions about the three billionaires. Could they be doing such a thing at Kraft Heinz [in which 3G Capital owns a stake] and others?”