MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Brazil’s Vale yields to government pressure names new CEO
Brazilian mining giant Vale, the world's biggest producer of iron ore, has chosen a new chief executive. Former Vale executive Murilo Ferreira will return to the company on 22 May. Read full article
Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesAs predicted - the first step in a nation taking over an international company.
Apr 06th, 2011 - 12:51 am - Link - Report abuse 0Time for Vale to sever all links with Brasil and locate its operations in a tax haven.
More comment tomorrow.
G.
the first step in a nation taking over an international company
Apr 06th, 2011 - 02:40 am - Link - Report abuse 0What a nonsense Geo, it's like typing here, the US government is taking over your mother (actually they do..).
Vale's largest shareholder is Valepar. And the government itself controls more than half of Valepar's shares. GeoffW., Vale can only take such kind of decisions if it has on its side the owners of 65% of its shares. The BR government has more than 30% of Vale's shares. So don't be counting on that. Plus, Vale won't do such a thing. Haven't you read the article? Vale's CEO is Dilma's man. :)
Apr 06th, 2011 - 08:50 am - Link - Report abuse 0I completely support Dilma's tough stance. If minority shareholders are not displeased - who cares! The government's priority is to promote national development, something to which, under Agnelli, Vale wasn't contributing at all. If it was up to private shareholders, even Petrobrás would cease investing in Brazil, and the same would apply for other Brazilian state companies with open capital. I also hope that Dilma will soon impose taxes on mineral exports, specially for mines sold to foreign companies.
The ‘mazelas’ or ills of Brasil are going to be addressed today by Aécio Nevis, Senator (twice Governor of Minas & grandson of Tancredo).
Apr 06th, 2011 - 12:38 pm - Link - Report abuse 0He will today criticize Central Government,
he will debate Brasil’s illogical fear of privatization – privatizations which (like Vale) kick-started Brasil into the modern world. I anticipate he will damn Dilma for *illegally* pressuring shareholding state companies and shareholding pensions organizations to replace the Vale CE as a prelude to stripping Vale of its worldwide profits through de facto (though undeclared) re-nationalization.
He will propose the taking away of Motorways from Federal Government and re-transfering them to the States in order to improve them.
He will question the present laws of autonomy of States & loss of autonomy to Central Government.
He will question the tax usage by state which was reduced by Lula from 27% to 19% with the difference transferred to the Central Government.
. . . . . . All designed to weaken and fragment the importance of constituent States and the funnel more and more money through the sticky hands of Central Government.
Is the Presidenta, now the first 100 days are over, starting to show her true colours?
“Fear of privatization” is entirely justified. Privatization often means that corporate demand might not benefit national production: Vale's insistence on ordering vessels from Asian shipyards is just an example of that. What is good for a private enterprise is not of necessity good for a country. If government pressure against Vale is illegal, so be it. The government's role - the role every citizen expects it to play - is to boost national development, production and job creation, not to appease stock market traders or minority shareholders, specially when it comes to companies like Vale, which borrows heavily from Brazilian state-owned banks, such as the BNDES, a bank created with the purpose of catalyzing Brazil's development, not corporate's earnings.
Apr 06th, 2011 - 08:08 pm - Link - Report abuse 0You're stuck in the 90s if you still put privatization as synonymous of modernization. The old state capitalist model of central planning and large state corporations has now been resurrected and turned popular by China. On the other hand, the Washington Consensus - the ideology that the economy is best managed by invisible market forces - has been blasted just yesterday by no one less than Dominique Strauss-Khan as an economic model that is vulnerable to financial instability and inefficient in reducing poverty.
Forgetit,
Apr 07th, 2011 - 11:19 am - Link - Report abuse 0your active support for illegal action by our government is the perfect example of the Brasilian Problem. We disagree fundimentally.
If a Chinese 'private company' took a 30-40 % share of one or more of Vale, JBS S.A., Petrobras, etc - thereby enabling it/them to change CE(s) - would that be OK with you?
If the Chinese Government then decided to nationalise it/them - would that be OK with you?
You support an anarchic approach to national and international industry, business, their managements and their ownerships.
OK if you are an anarchist, but you don't fit the classic model.
Wrt your words about BNDES cut no ice with me - development banking is there to move small to medium and from medium to large, not to focus a nation's funding on the already globally large and successful. This is not Development, this is another example of the smoke-and-mirrors circulation of big money through big corporations and back into Government pockets. Remember the Petrobras share issue fiasco.
Neo liberal ( fake capitalism) fanboys have a bad habbit habbit to type gibberish questions here, when they are desperate.
Apr 07th, 2011 - 04:02 pm - Link - Report abuse 0“Petrobras share issue fiasco”
What Fiasco geo, only in your head it is. Serious, are you really born in the US or you just grew up there? I'm asking because You truly act like brain dead, “dude”.
You do know that the left vs right issue is bogus..right?
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