The Lojas Americanas () scandal turns three years old on the 11th, still awaiting the punishment of those responsible for one of the biggest accounting frauds in the Brazilian market, which involved one of the main and oldest retail chains in the country and one of the most traded shares on the stock exchange.
On the night of January 11, 2023, the company’s then president, Sérgio Rial, released a relevant fact announcing a R$20 billion loss in Americanas’ accounts and left the position he had assumed ten days earlier. The shares fell 77% the following day, reducing the company’s market value by more than R$8 billion and leading the company to file for judicial recovery on January 19, 2023.
| Data | Market value (R$/million) |
| 31/12/2018 | 19.215 |
| 31/12/2019 | 32.890 |
| 31/12/2020 | 42.331 |
| 31/12/2021 | 28.394 |
| 31/12/2022 | 8.709 |
| 11/01/2023 | 10.830 |
| 12/01/2023 | 2.455 |
| 31/12/2023 | 821 |
| 31/12/2024 | 1.242 |
| 30/09/2025 | 1.027 |
| 06/01/2026 | 1.009 |
This week, Instituto Empresas, which represents investors affected by the losses related to Americanas, demanded that B3 disclose the final result of the judgment of the “enforcement” process involving the company, the members of the Board of Directors and the Audit Committee.
The trial concluded on November 8, 2023 and the Stock Exchange imposed fines on those involved for failures in the company’s management, but they appealed. B3 reported that it did not disclose the decision because the appeals “are still in the analysis phase”.
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Complaints and indictments
In court, in March last year, the former president of Americanas during the fraud period, Miguel Gutierrez, and 12 former executives and former employees were indicted by the Federal Police and denounced by the Federal Public Ministry, but are still awaiting trial. Processes opened by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which created a task force to coordinate the various investigations involving the case, also await judgment.
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In total, two administrative investigation inquiries are underway at the CVM, two administrative sanctioning processes — in which accusations have already been made — and six administrative processes analyzing information involving irregularities in the balance sheets. There are processes that investigate everything from the use of privileged information in the sale of Americanas shares before the fraud was disclosed to the responsibilities of executives, advisors and auditors for irregularities.
Company melted
In concrete terms, there is only the meltdown of the company, whose share price fell from R$ 1,200.00 on January 11, the day the fraud and the R$ 20 billion loss were announced, to R$ 4.88 today, values already adjusted after the 100 to 1 split of shares in August 2024. In 2025, the share fell 18.83%.
The company had to republish the 2021 balance sheet and presented the 2022 statement only at the end of 2023.
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The market value of Americanas went from R$10.8 billion before the discovery of the fraud to a minimum of R$307 million on June 7, 2024 and today it is around R$1.0 billion, around 10% of what it was before, according to a survey by Einar Rivero, founding partner of Elos Ayta.
Americanas’ annual sales went from R$25.8 billion in 2022 to R$14.3 billion in 2024. By the third quarter of 2025, sales totaled R$8.6 billion and the company’s net loss was R$227 million.
| Again | Sales R$/million |
| 2020 | 10.124 |
| 2021 | 22.696 |
| 2022 | 25.809 |
| 2023 | 14.942 |
| 2024 | 14.349 |
| 2025* | 8.615 |
Help from members
To prevent the company from going bankrupt, the three key shareholders, Jorge Paulo Lemann, Carlos Alberto Sicupira and Marcel Telles, partners at 3G, announced a contribution of R$12 billion to the company. The creditor banks contributed another R$12 billion.
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With the contribution in exchange for new shares, 3G’s partners once again became the official controllers of Americanas.
The company’s crisis spread not only through the stock market, but also through fixed income securities and funds, as Americanas was considered a company with good credit and its shares were included in many low-risk portfolios of banks and investors.
Thus, the judicial recovery plan involved a large part of the market and was approved by creditors in February 2024. In the plan, the company recognized debts of more than R$50 billion and 9 thousand creditors, led by banks Bradesco, BTG Pactual, Itaú and Santander, responsible for 35% of the value.
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Criminal organization
The complaint from the Federal Public Ministry, which is being processed in the Federal Court of Rio de Janeiro, cites the existence of a criminal organization that would be commanded by the company’s former president, Miguel Gutierrez. According to the MPF, Gutierres, who worked for the group for 30 years, 20 of which were in charge of the company, would be responsible for a scheme of accounting maneuvers to artificially inflate the profits of Grupo Americanas, Lojas Americanas and its digital arm B2W and manipulate share prices in the market.
Whatsapp messages obtained by the Federal Police show executives discussing how to prevent fraud from being discovered by the company’s auditors. The information was reinforced by the plea bargains of four of the executives involved.
Scheme since 2016
According to an investigation by the Federal Police, the scheme operated from at least February 2016 until December 2022, when Gutierrez left command of the company. Upon taking command of the company in the first days of January 2023, the former president of Santander Brasil Sergio Rial discovered the breach and made the complaint, leaving the position afterwards.
Gutierrez, who has Spanish citizenship, went to Spain after the frauds were discovered and was arrested there, but was released after giving a statement, handing over his passport and complying with precautionary measures.
Expectations about judicial recovery
Americanas remains in judicial recovery. At the beginning of last year, the then financial director of the retailer Camille Loyo Faria stated that the company expected to emerge from recovery at the end of February this year. Camille was replaced in December by Sebastien Durchon, former president of the Dia chain, as part of the restructuring promoted by the company’s new president, Fernando Dias Soares.
Soares took office in October last year, replacing Leonardo Coelho, marking a new phase of recovery for the company after debt renegotiation.
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