“It’s like scorched earth”, says CFO responsible for restructuring Americanas

In a meeting room at Americanas’ decaying headquarters, Camille Loyo Faria agrees that the office has seen better days.

It’s “ugly, like a company undergoing judicial recovery should be”, says the CFO.

The 50-year-old executive started at the Rio de Janeiro-based company on February 1, 2023, shortly after the request for judicial recovery due to accounting fraud that reached R$25 billion – one of the largest in Brazil of all time. And this is just the latest company that Faria has helped pull out of trouble.

“It’s like scorched earth,” she says about the restructuring process, in a rare interview. “I am strangely calm in times of high stress, and this allows me to disconnect and think with a clear head. This helps you have the courage to take risks.”

The former investment banker – with experience at Morgan Stanley, Bradesco and Bank of America Merrill Lynch – is now involved in two of the biggest restructurings in the Brazilian market, the other being the recovery of Oi. She has established herself as a competent negotiator to close business. Or, as she puts it, she knows how to “equally distribute the pain.”

Faria admits that she is uncomfortable talking about herself, but loves talking about restructuring.

“You have to have the stomach to deal with all this. The news in the press, discussions with banks and creditors, conversations with shareholders”, she says. “It’s too much”.

Even at the beginning of his career, working with strategy in telecommunications companies, Faria had to manage moments of chaos and transition. At the turn of the century, during his period at Embratel and Telecom Italia, the Brazilian government was privatizing much of the telecom industry. This meant she worked on mergers and acquisitions and often had a seat at the table during negotiations.

Later, she expanded her area of ​​activity by working on businesses throughout Latin America. In 2006, she took on her first CFO role, at an energy company called Terna Participações, overseeing its IPO. She then moved to São Paulo to work in investment banking, advising clients in the telecommunications and energy sectors.

While at Morgan Stanley, she was asked to take over as CEO of its then client Multiner in 2010 to oversee a turnaround and sell the energy company. She returned to Morgan in 2012. Later, when she was at Bank of America, where Oi was a client, she decided to join the telecommunications company as CFO amid the judicial recovery process in 2019.

“With investment banking, the more senior you become, the more you become a people person,” she said. “I have nothing against anyone who likes this, but I’m not that person who likes taking clients out for lunch, coffee or dinner. I like projects and I was moving further and further away from what I like to do.”

She joked about another realization she had when she left investment banking: “I was getting older as a banker, but I was still a super young executive.”

After a brief return to TIM, after Oi, Faria took on his biggest challenge yet, and in retail, a sector in which he had never worked before.

Sergio Rial, former CEO of Santander Brasil who took command of Americanas for a few days before resigning due to the explosive discoveries, was the one who invited Faria to join as CFO with the support of shareholders.

But Americanas only had days – instead of weeks or months – to prepare for a judicial recovery request. And this had to be done without a complete list of creditors and/or a clear understanding of the inner workings of the fraud. At the same time, the company was pressured from all sides by creditors and suppliers who were struggling to receive their debts. “It was easy to accept the invitation, as incredible as it may seem,” said Faria. “But it took everyone by surprise. People wanted answers to a series of questions that the company didn’t have.”

Daniel Goldberg, managing partner and chief investment officer at Lumina Capital Management, said he was not surprised that Faria accepted the role. He worked with her when he was president of Morgan Stanley in Brazil and again during his time at the hedge fund Farallon, which financed the restructuring of Oi.

“Camille is one of the best executives on the market to deal with this type of situation,” he said. “We dealt with urgent and highly complex issues in a way that, in my opinion, showed that Camille was one of the best in the business.”

With regard to Americanas, Faria also had an emotional connection with the retail giant, a reference in Brazil for more than 90 years.

“I bought shampoo and candy there,” said Faria. “When you think that certain experiences and knowledge that you have accumulated as a professional can help integrate a team and help save the brand and the company with more than 30 thousand people, you have a totally different purpose.”

It took months of investigation into the company’s accounting records to understand the true extent of the problem. Faria said he negotiated mainly alongside Roberto Thompson, a long-time ally of billionaire shareholders Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Carlos Sicupira, who ultimately agreed to invest R$12 billion to recapitalize the company.

Faria and his team managed to get more than 97% of creditors to agree to a plan that will reduce the company’s debt to around R$1.8 billion and convert a large part of the liabilities held by banks into shares.

“We weren’t trying to pass the plan by a simple majority, but we were trying to get everyone on board,” she said. “Because spending R$12 billion to solve just part of the problem is an expensive undertaking.”

It also downplays what, from the outside, appeared to be long, drawn-out conversations with certain banks, which presented harshly worded arguments in court, with certain details leaked to the press.

The problems are far from over for Americanas and Faria. On Wednesday night (24), the company informed in a document that an arbitration process is being initiated by an investor regarding losses resulting from the drop in share prices.

“Bankruptcies are painful processes,” she said. “To me, when you can bring the restructuring process to an end is when the people around the table feel like the pain has been distributed equally.”

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