Brazil: recent corporate governance advancements and retreats

Abstract

This article overviews recent developments and set backs in the regulation and selfregulation of Brazilian corporate governance. Ownership transitioned from concentrated control dominance to a mixed pattern of a substantial minority of companies with shared control under shareholder agreements and a few dispersed ownership companies. Recent statistics suggest a reversal in this trend with the increase in concentrated control companies. Companies that once embraced premium trading lists that required better corporate governance practices resisted a tightening of this self-regulation and some successfully and lawfully did not comply with new compensation disclosure regulation. Many companies have gone back private. Institutional investors, in general, did not show an effective contribution to corporate governance improvement in their investees and the largest ones face serious internal conflict of interest issues.