Brazilian companies are going through a period of financial pressure without recent precedents, marked by a combination of high interest rates, restricted credit and increased debt.
This scenario has put pressure on companies’ cash flow and boosted profits, which reached record levels in 2025. According to research by Serasa Experian, in the last year alone, 2,466 companies filed processes to restructure their accounts.
The common thread in this scenario is the Selic, which remained stationary at 15% per year for much of last year, the highest level in almost two decades. With the cost of credit soaring, companies that leveraged themselves during the period of low interest rates therefore began to face an increasingly difficult account to close.
For Granito Boneli Advogados partner and specialist in business recovery, Felipe Granito, this transition of scenario left companies in a situation of unsustainable financial leverage.
According to the expert, there is, therefore, a direct relationship between the high interest rate environment and .
Furthermore, a survey carried out by Serasa Experian showed that, from the beginning of 2025 until July, 8 million Brazilian CNPJs were negative, with an increase of 200 thousand businesses in the monthly comparison.
“This level of interest rates for so long, without a doubt, has a direct impact on this moment of financial crisis. And there are also several other geopolitical and macroeconomic factors that lead us to this scenario of financial crisis”, says Granito.
On the other hand, the debt of publicly traded companies in Brazil illustrates the scale of the problem. A, according to a survey by consultant Einar Rivero, CEO of Elos Ayta. Excluding Petrobras, the total drops to R$1.9 trillion, still a significant jump in five years.
For Austin Rating’s chief economist, Alex Agostini, the mechanism for transmitting interest to business activity occurs, above all, through the increase in the cost of credit, essential for financing operations.
“When the interest rate is high, the final cost increases and companies are not always able to pass on this increase in financial cost to the final price”, assesses Agostini.
In addition to the rise in interest rates, Felipe Granito also draws attention to the limited access to credit in Brazil, especially among smaller companies.
“Small companies in Brazil have very limited access to good credit lines”, he states.
Without access to alternative financing mechanisms, such as issuing private debt or raising money on the capital market, they are restricted to traditional bank credit, which is often more expensive and has shorter terms.
For the specialist, judicial recovery is often unfeasible from a practical point of view for this group. “If a small company files for judicial recovery, it is an immediate ticket. It loses all credits in the market, whether with the supplier or with financial institutions. It stops operating”, he explains.
In this scenario, with 743 companies, or 30.1% of the total, an increase of 3.8 percentage points compared to 2024, according to Serasa Experian.
Retail and services are also among the most under pressure, reflecting the combination of high credit costs and consumers with lower purchasing power.
For Agostini, the path for SMEs therefore involves a structural change in access to capital, with the expansion of corporate governance as a gateway to the capital market.
“The path for medium and small companies is to improve the level of governance to access this capital market”, he assessed.
Even with the beginning of a cycle of cuts in the Selic, the effects on the volume of recoveries should take time to appear, since the transmission of monetary policy to economic activity usually takes between six and nine months to consolidate.
