Brazil’s Economic Elites: High Profit Businesses

In da 90s, Brazil was like "let's flex and open up our financial accounts and system - ya know, financial liberalisation - to like, connect our domestic and international financial game." In the early 1990s, the Brazilian gov started making changes to make it easier for peeps to invest in stuff overseas and for foreigners to invest in our economy. They wanted to reduce all those annoying costs and paperwork, ya know? It's lowkey interesting to peep that the changes in financial transactions regulations didn't come from a total revamp of the 1964-1967 reforms. Instead, they were all about new norms, circular letters, amendments, and fresh interpretations of the existing laws and norms. Like, yo, despite its mad influence on the economy, most of these new rules were made by BACEN without getting checked by big political groups, not even the National Congress or like, society.

In 1987, the BACEN was like, "Yo, let's make Resolution 1289 to legit regulate foreign portfolio investments, so investors can flex in different markets, like foreign investment companies, investment funds, or stocks and bonds, you know?"

In 1991, this resolution was like totally amended with the Annex IV to Thru deregulation, the gov also wanted to transfer stuff that used to be run by the public to be done by private companies and really wanted to boost foreign involvement in our economy. OMG, like in the 90s, there were these major changes that totally shook things up. They were all about breaking the monopoly in telecommunications and natural resource stuff. It was like, no more discrimination between Brazilian companies and foreign-owned ones. It was a big deal, you know? This change made it easier for foreigners to get in on the privatisation and concession action and let foreign companies score some cash and perks from the government. OMG, like the whole privatisation and mergers thing totally shook up the game. It basically killed the old school connection between private national, state, and foreign money. Now, foreign capital is like the boss, especially in fancy services and high-tech stuff. They totally took over from the state-owned companies (Table 40).The first public enterprise to be privatized was Usiminas, a company slaying in the steel sector, on 24th October 1991, for a lil' less than one billion dollars. 

Yo, peep Table 39 up there, it's got all the lit deets about the whole privatisation vibe that went down in Brazil. 

It's lowkey important to peep some key traits of the process, ya know? First, the privatisation sesh spread over a lit range of sectors, from industry (petrochemical and mining), to infrastructure (electric and transports) to public utilities (telecommunications and water and OMG, the govt went from handling basic stuff like sanitation to dealing with banks, like, major flex. They sold off around 133 public companies and made over $105 billion from 1990 to 2002. So lit! Second, cash was like the main vibe for firms getting privatised, but like liability transfers were kinda not that big of a deal. OMG, like, back in the day, until 1995, peeps were all about selling stuff by accepting all kinds of public bills and bonds, ya know? It was all about making it easier for buyers who didn't have cash to still get what they wanted. Lit!119 Third, the foreign buyers were totally flexin' in the privatisation game, copping almost 50% of the whole amount, with 99% of it goin' down after 1995. Periodical publication of its results, ya know? Like, the BNDES has been in the game of evaluating and financing long-term investment projects for, like, forever. And then they got into the whole privatisation scene in the 80s, which totally gave them street cred. So, it's no surprise that the BNDES became the go-to for privatisation stuff (and their president became the boss of the Denationalisation Commission, duh). Throughout the process, which went on till the 90s, not much of this institutional setup was tweaked unless for the scope of the process which got bigger. OMG, like in 1995, the gov was all about privatization and they totally revamped the 1988 Constitution to include a bunch of sectors up for grabs and let foreign peeps get in on the action too, which wasn't allowed before. Lit!

Privatization and Re-regulation

Privatisation has been on the Brazilian government's agenda since the 80s because of the debt crisis. They thought it would fix the money problems (Pinheiro and Oliveira-Filho 1991). The rate of progress of these reforms was like, hella slow in the first half of the 1980s cuz the economic vibe was super whack and private companies didn't wanna invest in big things like this. Public companies were mad in debt, and lots of private companies were too. The economy was like, totally gloomy and foreign money was bouncing. The public sector wasn't down to fund privatization either.117 In the second half of the decade, tho, the gov was getting hella pressed by the World Bank and external creditors to privatise its big entrepreneurial sector. OMG, international institutions totally flexed their external debt negotiations to lowkey control Brazil's policies. So persuasive, fam!118 In the specific instance of privatisation, like, negotiations of external debt came to involve swaps of debt for being part of privatised corps. In this context, like, in 1990, the Collor government was all like, "Yo, let's set up this lit programme of privatisation and new regulation for mad markets, but like, under the strict control of the government, you know?" On 12th April, the gov enacted Law 8031, like, totally introducing the National Plan of Denationalisation (PND - Plano Nacional de Desestatização) which set goals n stuff: