The Who is Who Legal Report on Corporate Governance highlights that Brazil has increased significantly the number of lawyers in the past 12 months. More deals and business boost the demand for legal services.
What is moving the market
The flagship infrastructure programme aimed at stimulating development and boosting expansion, is creating a lot of work for M&A and governance specialists as it enters its second stage of development in time for the country’s upcoming sporting events.
The numbers
As seen in charts 2 and 2.1, the 2010 research featured 21 Brazilian lawyers – a 27% increase from last year in the number listed.
This places Brazilian representation second only to the USA in the 2011 research.
What locals say
Local lawyers talk of a boost in corporate governance: companies such as Petrobras and Telefónica are seeking advice on creating partnerships with domestic entities, and shareholder agreements, particularly in the aviation and energy industries. As one local lawyer commented, “the country is taking a more sophisticated approach to corporate governance: clients invest more time and money into getting the right people to identify and deal with the correct issues to get the deal right first time”.
Financial regulation taken very seriously
Policy makers are developing the governance system to support the increase in work: the introduction of further transparency and requirements for financial statements disclosure from Brazil’s Securities and Exchange Commission are being viewed domestically as a hard-line measure, but internationally it is regarded as a step in the right direction towards a stronger and more stringent governance regime, in line with that of many developed economies.
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