Without directly mentioning the retailer, billionaire cites “accounting fraud” and says failure is “not a problem”
Brazilian businessman Jorge Paulo Lemann stated this Saturday (April 6, 2024) that he has been experiencing 2 years of failure in one of his companies and has been trying “save her” –an indirect statement to the crisis of Americans. Without directly mentioning the retailer, he cited a “accounting fraud situation”. Spoke during a panel at the 10th Brazil Conference 2024, held at Harvard University (USA).
“Overall, I was pretty successful. But the last 2 years have not been very successful. We had a crisis in one of our companies with an accounting fraud situation and we are dealing with it. We have to try to save this company“, he said.
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Lemann is one of Americanas’ main partners. He shares the management of the company with businessmen Marcel Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicupira. They form 3G Capital.
In January 2023, a R$20 million hole in Americanas' accounts was revealed. The company lost more than 90% of its market value in B3 (São Paulo Stock Exchange) and recorded a loss of around R$4.6 billion.
The businessman also spoke about governance solutions to deal with problems in companies during the conference.
“We have people similar to us around the world who do a better job in governance, in running large corporations. We must learn from them to create a system where these companies can continue to grow for as long as possible without our presence“, he said.
The billionaire also said that failure should not be considered “necessarily a problem” and provided guidance to students and young entrepreneurs.
“You have to try to understand why you weren't successful. Don't necessarily look at it as if this is a problem. But as a problem to be solved, how can you do better next time”he stated.
In addition to Americanas, Lemann created Banco Garantia and is the controlling shareholder of the brewery AB Inbev.
BRAZIL CONFERENCE
The event has been promoted annually since 2015 by Brazilian students from the Boston region, in the USA, a place known for receiving illegal Latin immigrants, especially from Brazil, for decades.
Despite being in a North American city, most of the panels are with Brazilians speaking in Portuguese on stage and an audience made up mostly of people from Brazil, as if it were a conference held in São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro.
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