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Eletrobras sold last Friday the last electricity distributor of the national electricity company. Ceal, an Alagoas distributor, was sold to the Equatorial group at an auction held at B3 headquarters in São Paulo.
The public company closes an important chapter in the restructuring of the company, which dismantled seven energy distributors in the last two years. dozens of holdings in production and transportation companies, and have put in place voluntary layoff programs for employees.
Since mid-2016, the company has reduced its debt (debt versus cash generation) from 9 times to almost 3 times, and its workforce, its highest cost, from 26,000 to less than 14,000, he said.
Eletrobras managed to privatize only six companies: the distributors of Piauí, Acre, Rondônia, Roraima, Amazonas and now in Alagoas. .
All were sold for the nominal value of R $ 50,000. In return, the winning companies committed to make investments totaling at least 6.5 billion rubles in addition to capital increases of 2.4 billion.
With the sale, Eletrobras also got rid of extremely loss-making businesses. According to the State, the losses accumulated by the companies amounted to 22.1 billion rand by 2017.
Moreover, if they were not privatized, the companies should be extinguished, which would result in an additional cost of R21 billion.
The unions of Eletrobras employees and politicians, including the government party of Michel Temer, strongly opposed the sale. Historically, Eletrobras was under the influence of the MDB, which gave indications on the positions of the distributors.
This political resistance became clear during the National Congress vote on measures to reduce the responsibilities of distributors, transferring them to the consumer bill and making companies more attractive for private initiative.
Unions also tried to prevent the privatization of distributors with several lawsuits, which generated more than 50 injunctions – all canceled by the government.
In the case of the Alagoas auction, another legal obstacle delayed the auction: a legal imbroglio with the Alagoas government, which led in June this year to an injunction by Minister Ricardo Lewandowski of the Federal Supreme Court (STF). suspended the sale of the company until the outstanding issues have been resolved. The decision was canceled by the minister himself in November, endorsing the event.
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