Veja as quatro dificuldades de adequação ao IFRS

FinancialWeb / Ana Caselatto
20/08/2009
Legislação, idioma, educação e mundo jurídico foram os pontos ressaltados pelo professor Nelson Carvalho
A adaptação do Brasil às normas contábeis internacionais do IFRS pode demandar um esforço maior frente aos demais países, embora ele esteja equiparado ao restante do mundo no processo de convergência. Em entrevista ao FinancialWeb durante o seminário "Evolução das Demonstrações Contábeis no Brasil", realizado na semana passada, o professor da Fipecafi Nelson Carvalho informou que, dentro de uma amostra de 170 países, o Brasil se coloca entre os 140 que estão substancialmente em processo de adequação.
Ele aponta, ainda, que cerca de 30 estão relutantes por conta da menor dependência de recursos externos e optaram por não autorizar convergências domésticas neste momento para aguardar a maturação do projeto globalmente. O docente ressaltou as quatro maiores dificuldades que devem ser sentidas nacionalmente, assim como em outras regiões com cultura contábil semelhante.
Confira a seguir cada uma delas:
Legislação: para Carvalho, o País não está no mesmo patamar que o restante no que cabe às práticas de negócios, usos e costumes. Ele explica que, por aqui, “a adoção das normas do IFRS requer reformulação radical das normas emitidas e das leis vigentes”;
Idioma: essa é uma dificuldade comum a todos os países que não têm a língua inglesa como a natal, já que as normas do IFRS são emitidas em Londres, no Reino Unido. Desta forma, há locais em vantagem no processo de convergência porque vão ler as normas tais como foram redigidas. “Países como Rússia, Japão, Argentina e Brasil dependem de uma tradução e ela não é simples, pois requer profundo conhecimento de finanças pelo tradutor. Essa é uma dificuldade que nós temos, mas nem todos os países têm”, afirma;
Educação: os profissionais já atuantes no mercado deverão passar por um reciclagem de todo o processo aprendido e os estudantes e futuros ofissionais precisão de cursos com currículo educacional completamente reformulado. Para Carvalho “a educação contábil, da ótica tributária para a ótica de mercado de capitais e de crédito (contabilidade financeira) deve ser apartada da contabilidade tributária”;
Jurídico: na esfera jurídica, as normas contábeis internacionais tomam por base o ambiente filosófico do common law, que refere-se ao método para a tomada de uma decisão, a qual depende dos casos anteriores e afeta o direito a ser aplicado a casos futuros. Neste sistema, segundo afirma o professor, “existe muito mais espaço para interpretação das normas pelos tribunais do que no modelo filosófico nacional (codificado ou civil). O convívio do direito codificado demanda que tudo ou quase tudo deve estar contemplado na norma legal”.

Controladora da Elektro fará oferta de ações nos EUA

Valor Online
20/08/2009
A AEI (Ashmore Energy International), controladora da distribuidora de energia Elektro, registrou na Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), órgão regulador do mercado de capitais dos EUA, uma oferta pública primária e secundária de ações.
Conforme comunicado da Elektro, a "oferta não será registrada na Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM) e, portanto, não haverá oferta para o público no Brasil".
No prospecto apresentado à SEC, ainda não aparece uma estimativa de quanto a AEI pretende captar com a oferta de ações.
Ainda com base no prospecto, é possível notar que 36% do Ebitda (lucro antes de juros, impostos, depreciação e amortização) da AEI vem do Brasil, sendo que outros 35% são obtidos com as operações na Colômbia.

Comércio eletrônico é a aposta das redes de varejo

DCI / Danielle Fonseca
20/08/2009
A disputa das redes de varejo no comércio eletrônico, que deve movimentar R$ 10,5 bilhões em 2009, ficará ainda mais acirrada no final do ano. Os maiores players com operações virtuais já estabelecidas já começam a se preparar para o período, com reforço de equipes, aprimoramento da logística de entrega e diversificação de produtos. O Walmart é um deles e, com uma operação de e-commerce recente, tem estratégia agressiva para aumentar sua fatia nesse mercado.
A entrada de novos players, como Casas Bahia, e os investimentos na expansão das operações de empresas como Extra.com, do Grupo Pão de Açúcar, que agora detém também o PontoFrio.com, já está ameaçando a hegemonia da B2W, resultado da fusão entre Submarino e Americanas.com. A empresa chegou a ter 50% do mercado e, hoje, detém 36%, de acordo com a e-bit, empresa especializada em comércio eletrônico. A participação das dez maiores redes também sofreu uma leve redução de 2,2% neste semestre, uma tendência de descentralização das lojas virtuais.
De acordo com Flávio Dias, diretor de e-commerce do Walmart, apesar de não revelar valores, a rede está com fortes investimentos e preocupada em se antecipar, tanto que em agosto já está se preparando para o Natal, quando afirma que não deve ter problemas de entrega porque terá o dobro da capacidade que tem hoje. "Preferimos antecipar os investimentos e ter até ociosidade. Estamos ampliando a nossa estrutura, temos um operador logístico que não para de crescer, e reforçarmos a equipe e o quadro de funcionários", explica.
Este ano o Walmart ainda deve disputar as vendas de Natal com um portfólio maior de produtos e concorrendo com todos os players, já que deve passar a vender móveis e livros, por exemplo. A rede optou pela estratégia de aos poucos oferecer mais categorias de produtos, o que ainda trará maior base de clientes. Hoje, vendem 15 categorias e, até o final de 2009, mais duas -a de livros, CDs e DVDs e a de ferramentas- devem ser oferecidas, o que fará com que o número de itens do site salte de 30 mil para 100 mil. Dias ainda destaca que a negociação para aumentar o mix e manter preços baixos é grande: "Estamos superpreparados, já temos uma negociação muito forte com os fornecedores e vamos incomodar bastante: não lançamos categorias por lançar", reforça.

Câmara aprova juro menor para parcelamento no Refis

Agência Estado / Denise Madueño
20/08/2009
O governo sofreu uma derrota hoje no plenário da Câmara. Os deputados aprovaram juros mais baixos para a correção do parcelamento de dívidas dos devedores que aderiram ao Refis. Os deputados trocaram o cálculo feito pela taxa Selic pela média aritmética dos valores da Taxa de Juros de Longo Prazo (TJLP) e da Selic. Esse dispositivo foi incluído na MP pelo deputado Sandro Mabel (PR-GO), relator da MP 462, que está sendo votada pelos deputados.
Esse mesmo item foi vetado pelo presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, depois de incluído na MP 449. A votação foi simbólica. Ficaram contra o texto o PT, o PSOL e o líder do governo. A base ficou contra a orientação do governo e votou com Mabel.

Brazil Seeks More Control of Oil Beneath Its Seas

The New York Times
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: August 17, 2009
RIO DE JANEIRO — Faced with the world’s most important oil discovery in years, the Brazilian government is seeking to step back from more than a decade of close cooperation with foreign oil companies and more directly control the extraction itself.
The move is part of a nationalistic drive to increase the country’s benefits from its natural resources and cement its position as a global power. But it could significantly slow the development of the oil fields at a time when the world is looking for new sources, energy and risk analysts said.
This month, Brazil’s government said it wanted the national oil company, Petrobras, to control all future development of the deep-sea fields discovered in 2007, which international geologists estimate could hold tens of billions of barrels of recoverable oil.
The change would make Petrobras the operator for the 62 percent of the new area that has yet to be bid out, consigning foreign companies to the role of financial investors. That would limit their ability to help set the pace for the oil fields’ development, while giving Petrobras significantly more power to generate jobs and award lucrative contracts.
The oil lies beneath about 20,000 feet of water, shifting sand, and a thick layer of salt. This so-called pre-salt region, stretching hundreds of miles, is the biggest oil reserve being developed in the world today, especially given the lack of headway in gaining access to Iraq’s extensive deposits, said Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy research consultancy. It is also expected to be among the most complicated sets of projects in the history of the oil industry.
“The timing and scale of the development of the pre-salt will be one of the most significant factors for the global oil balance in the next decade, and even more so after 2020,” when Brazil is expected to ramp up production even further, Mr. Yergin said. “If it doesn’t happen it will be a big setback for Brazil in terms of revenue, and a significant loss for the world in terms of new oil supplies.”
For Brazil, the stakes are high. Many here see the oil as a magic bullet for tackling the country’s biggest social challenges. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s popular president, wants to alter energy laws to funnel more revenue from the undeveloped fields to government coffers and set up funds to improve education and health care. His proposal will be delivered to Congress sometime next week, one of his aides said Monday.
Despite its recent economic boom, Brazil still struggles with extreme poverty, inequality and an illiteracy rate over 10 percent.
Government officials here insist Brazil will not be swept up in the sort of nationalistic fervor that has washed across Latin America in recent years. As Mexico did in the late 1930s, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador have reduced the presence of foreign energy companies, only to have their production of oil and natural gas stagnate or decline.
Mr. da Silva’s government is not proposing that foreigners be excluded altogether from energy projects, or even that they not be given the chance to win majority stakes in some cases. Foreign companies are already involved in the first set of pre-salt projects, including the giant field, called Tupi, that Petrobras estimates holds five to eight billion barrels of oil and natural gas.
Even without the next group of pre-salt fields, Brazil is looking to more than double its oil production to 5.7 million barrels a day by 2020.
Brazil, which discovered big oil late in its economic development, has a diversified economy that will help it to avoid the “Dutch Disease” of natural resource dependence that has afflicted several of the world’s oil powers, said José Sergio Gabrielli, the president of Petrobras.
“Petrobras is very big,” Mr. Gabrielli said, “but Brazil is bigger than Petrobras.”
He said the nationalism bubbling up now “is not nationalism against foreigners” but rather a debate over the speed of the development, who will get the largest share of the income stream and who will benefit from the related technology and knowledge.
Still, he acknowledged that nationalistic winds were beginning to blow again. With Brazil’s green and yellow flag draped over the stage, oil union members watched a new documentary here last month, “The Oil Must be Ours — Ultimate Frontier.” In the film, geologists, union leaders and even a 92-year-old physician, Maria Augusta Tibiriçá, discuss how the new fields could generate “trillions of dollars” and transform Brazil’s future.
A dozen union members led off the evening with a rendition of Brazil’s national anthem, then “It Will Happen,” a song written for the movie that blends bossa nova and samba rhythms.
If oil “is very deep under the sea,” they sang, “will we play to win?”
The new nationalistic fervor recalls the 1970s and 1980s, when Brazil’s military government declared that “the Amazon is ours” to ward off foreign encroachments on the rain forest.
And that evokes the initial protectionist concerns that were raised after a trickle of oil was discovered in Brazil in 1939. A few years later, a general declared “the oil is ours” amid fears that American oil companies would find a way to take it. Protesters demonstrated through the 1950s outside of Standard Oil’s Esso Building in downtown Rio.
It was in that populist climate that, in 1953, President Getúlio Vargas founded Petrobras and awarded it an oil monopoly. Only in 1997 were foreign companies allowed to participate in exploration and production.
Mr. da Silva’s plans for more control of the new fields will face a stiff battle in Brazil’s Congress, where opposition leaders say they will push to delay the plan, to deny him a victory that could be a political boost to Dilma Rousseff, his chief of staff and chosen candidate to succeed him in next year’s election.
Ms. Rousseff, who is in charge of the government’s pre-salt proposal, is also the chairwoman of the Petrobras board of directors. The company is 55.7 percent government-owned; other members of the board are also political appointees.
“The government is going to use every ideological, nationalist and emotional argument to try to get this approved before next year’s election, but it is going to be very difficult for it to pass,” said Tasso Jereissati, a senator from the Brazilian Social Democratic Party who is critical of the government’s proposal.
Brazil’s Senate is already coping with a broad investigation into irregularities and improprieties at Petrobras, an inquiry brought by Mr. da Silva’s political opposition.
Mr. Gabrielli, the Petrobras president, argues that the government has good reasons for wanting to limit foreign participation. In 1997, oil prices were much lower and Brazil’s economy was struggling. Today, Brazil has more than $220 billion in foreign reserves, oil prices are higher and Petrobras has become the fourth biggest company in the Americas.
“The financial condition is completely different,” Mr. Gabrielli said. And the development of the new fields, once seen as risky, “now is a winning lottery ticket.”
With concerns over whether Brazil can procure the estimated $600 billion it will take to develop new fields over the next 20 years or so, the government is banking on international oil companies’ willingness to bid high.
“This is the only large oil discovery in the last few years; there is no other,” Ms. Rousseff said this month in an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Valor Econômico.
But the decision to give Petrobras operational control is shortsighted and risky and could delay Brazil’s ability to use the oil to help transform the country, said Christopher Garman, an analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy in New York.
“What if we have a technological breakthrough in renewable energy, and five to eight years from now the price of oil is not what it is today?” Mr. Garman said. “Is Brazil going to maximize investments now or keep the oil in the ground for longer?”
Lost in the debate, Mr. Gabrielli said, is the reality that the equipment needed to drill the new fields is in short supply. Petrobras executives are trying to motivate suppliers around the world to develop equipment.
Through 2017, Petrobras will need 40 oil rigs capable of drilling deep enough to reach the new fields — more than half the total number of such rigs that exist in the world today, Mr. Gabrielli said. The company is requiring that 28 of them be built in Brazil.
Mr. Gabrielli said the company was keeping its international expansion spending at $16 billion, so that it could focus on developing deepwater fields at home.
“The question is not whether to speed up or not to speed up,” Mr. Gabrielli said. “We are at the limits of the world capacity for the industry.”

SEC Is Ready to File Case Against Pequot

The Wall Street Journal
By KARA SCANNELL and JENNY STRASBURG
AUGUST 13, 2009
The Securities and Exchange Commission is prepared to file insider-trading charges against Pequot Capital Management and its founder Arthur Samberg over its 2001 trading of Microsoft Corp. stock, according to a letter Pequot sent to investors.
The SEC sent a Wells notice to Mr. Samberg and the firm indicating it is prepared to bring civil fraud charges against Mr. Samberg and the firm and to seek a bar preventing him from serving as an investment adviser, according to the letter. The firm received the Wells notice about six weeks ago, a person familiar with the matter said.
A Wells notice is issued to indicate SEC staff will recommend to the five-member commission that it approve the filing of a lawsuit or administrative proceeding. That doesn't mean the SEC ultimately would take action. Pequot's letter said Mr. Samberg would likely fight the charges if the SEC were to move forward with the case. It said the Wells notice was "without merit" and that the firm would "vigorously" fight the charges. Spokesmen for the SEC and Pequot declined to comment.
Mr. Samberg announced in late May that he was closing the firm in the wake of the investigation, saying in a letter to investors that the inquiries "have cast a cloud over the firm and have become a source of personal distraction." Pequot once oversaw $15 billion, but investors have pulled away under the regulatory scrutiny.
As part of the firm's wind-down, Mr. Samberg, 68 years old, told investors in a letter dated Aug. 10 about the Wells notice he and the firm received. The development shouldn't slow Pequot's liquidation, which has already started, the firm said.
The SEC and the Justice Department have been investigating Pequot's trading in 18 stocks on and off since 2005. The SEC closed its investigation in November 2006, citing insufficient evidence. The two agencies reopened the investigation late last year after new information came to light during divorce proceedings involving David Zilkha, a former Microsoft employee whom Mr. Samberg hired in April 2001. The SEC's current investigation is focused on whether Pequot obtained nonpublic information from Mr. Zilkha about the software company's earnings before they were announced in summer 2001. Pequot's trades in Microsoft yielded more than $2 million, according to a 2006 SEC report on its first investigation. Mr. Zilkha was in contact with at least one Microsoft employee during that time, according to the SEC report and emails provided by congressional staffers.
Microsoft spokesman David Bowermaster said, "Microsoft cooperated fully with the earlier SEC inquiry and will continue to do so if we are contacted again."
According to new emails, which surfaced within the past year, Mr. Zilkha used a personal email account to contact Microsoft employee Mark Spain. In the emails, he asked Mr. Spain about earnings rumors, among other things. Mr. Zilkha, who left Pequot in September 2001, and an attorney representing him couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday.
In January, Mr. Spain told The Wall Street Journal there was "absolutely no instance in which I shared information with anyone, David included, that was inappropriate or inside." On Wednesday, Mr. Spain referred calls to his attorney, Angelo Calfo, who said, "Mark did not receive a Wells notice and does not expect one. He's done nothing illegal or wrong." Mr. Calfo added that his client has responded to the SEC's inquiries.
Mr. Spain is no longer employed by Microsoft. His attorney says his departure was unrelated to the SEC investigation.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York, which had been investigating the matter, said it wouldn't "confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation."