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vincentvelour · 6 years ago

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Marcelo Borgheti Knows Why Companies Expand Into Brazil

6/19/2019

By John Bostwick, Head of Content Management

Brazil has long attracted foreign investors. With a population of over 200 million, it has the largest economy in Latin America and the eighth largest in the world. For over a decade, Brazil has been part of the so-called BRICS bloc of countries, along with Russia, India, China and South Africa. These economies are expected by many to outpace developed countries over the next thirty years and play an increasingly prominent role in the global economy.

Brazil has, however, endured a difficult decade. It continues to recover from a 2015-2016 recession that resulted in a nearly 7 percent contraction of its economy. That economy has grown slowly and steadily since then, but suffered a setback last month with predictions that it again shrank during the first quarter of 2019.

Despite these headwinds, there is cause for optimism. Right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro is intent on implementing tax and other reforms to attract investment and address longstanding corruption. In January’s World Economic Forum in Switzerland, he told a group of business leaders that his economic team would, by the end of his term, “position Brazil in the ranking of the 50 best countries in the world to do business.”

There’s evidence the government’s efforts are working. According to the World Bank’s Doing Business 2019 report, the country recorded the largest improvements in Latin America and the Caribbean in ease of doing business. According to the report, the improvements are a direct result of Brazil’s “effort to strengthen its business environment” with reforms like electronic registration for companies.

Marcelo Borgheti has witnessed the effects of these reforms first hand, and he’s able to put them in context like few others can. For thirty years, he has helped multinational companies expand into and operate in Brazil.

Based in Sao Paolo, Marcelo is Vistra’s Brazil Managing Director. Prior to joining Vistra, he was a partner at Arthur Andersen in the U.S. and Brazil, and was CEO of his own business consulting firm. A Brazilian citizen, he holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in economics.

Have you noticed an increased interest from multinationals looking to expand into Brazil as a result of the government’s recent efforts to make the country more business-friendly?

We have seen an increase, yes, and not only in multinationals coming to Brazil for the first time, but also an increase in existing companies expanding within the country. It’s clear that at least some of this activity is a result of the government’s efforts.

Can you give an example of a recent reform that’s having a positive effect on attracting foreign investors?

One important change is that U.S. citizens can electronically apply for a Brazilian visa, which of course makes the process of getting to Brazil a lot easier and more appealing. In the past, if you were a U.S. citizen you had to go to a Brazilian consulate in person.

What are some of the top reasons your clients expand into Brazil?

Brazilian assets are attractive now, in part because of the strength of the U.S. dollar against the real. This makes acquiring companies in Brazil favorable.

On a more general level, investors are attracted to Brazil’s large economy and welcoming culture, which are powerful inducements. The country also boasts an educated, diverse workforce that is highly appealing to investors. I do think, even after recent economic challenges, that Brazil is still regarded by many foreign investors not only as a promising expansion target but as a market they have to be in.

What are some of the top benefits and challenges companies face when they expand into Brazil?

I’ve already mentioned some of the benefits, including the country’s large market, educated and diverse workforce, and large economy.

Brazil does remain a complex tax jurisdiction, however, and it takes time and effort to comply with local requirements. I truly don’t think this should put off investors, though. We regard Brazil’s tax and accounting requirements as a great opportunity to provide a good service to our clients. We know what it takes to operate efficiently and compliantly here, and we want to make it easier for foreign companies to run their businesses in Brazil, acquire local companies or establish startups.

Is there any area of compliance in Brazil that has significantly changed in recent years?

I'd say that anti-money laundering and UBO [i.e., laws that require businesses to report on their ultimate beneficial owners] requirements are the most important. They’ve changed the perception of how to do business in Brazil, and what it takes to establish and run compliant operations here.

Know-your-customer [KYC] laws are also increasingly strict, as are Brazilian Central Bank requirements. It’s never been particularly easy for a foreign business to open a bank account in Brazil, and KYC laws are not making the process any easier or quicker. Knowing how long the process takes and what it takes are critical to setting accurate budgets, timelines and expectations. We recommend doing business with a Brazilian bank when you do expand.

Do your clients tend to send expats or hire locals when expanding to Brazil?

That’s changed over the last 10 years or so. Companies tend to hire locals now because these employees understand local business requirements and practices, and of course they know local cultural behaviors.

Where do your clients typically expand in Brazil? Have you noticed changes in this area in recent years?

We have clients operating all over Brazil. In the past, most companies’ offices were located in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Businesses are increasingly considering and setting up operations in other locations, mainly due to state tax incentives, quality-of-life and security concerns, and cost-of-living considerations. Low cost of living in particular can allow an employer to offer lower salaries in locations that are outside expensive traditional expansion targets like Sao Paulo.

Do you find that companies from certain countries more easily adapt to operating in Brazil, either for regulatory or cultural reasons?

I’d say no. Brazil itself is a blend of many cultures and tends to be welcoming.

We do attract many foreign investors from across Latin America, mainly due to Mercosul [also called Mercosur, the South American trading bloc with the four founding members Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay]. Our bilateral trade with Chile is on the rise, as is trade with Mexico. We have a substantial presence of European-headquartered multinational companies too.

That said, most of our volume comes from U.S.-based organizations. There are many reasons we attract U.S. companies, including our favorable time zone and Brazilians’ identification with U.S. culture.

Over the last three years, we’ve also seen a substantial increase in Chinese foreign investment.

The 11th annual BRICS Summit will be held in Brazil this year. How has being part of this group affected how Brazilians and others understand Brazil’s economy?

Brazil assumes the presidency of the BRICS this year, but we also have a new government that has indicated it wants greater alignment with the United States. So, how Brazil moves forward with regard to the other BRICS countries — in particular China and Russia — is certainly something to watch this year.

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surly01 · 8 years ago

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Support the Troops: Bring Them Home

Published on the Doomstead Diner May 29, 2016

Originally article published on the Doomstead Diner on May 28, 2012

"Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them."

— Harold Pinter, from his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature, 2005

On Memorial Day, the best thing that anyone reading this can do is to read the entirety of Harold Pinter's glorious Nobel acceptance speech, source for the above quote. Much of Pinter's work explores the fluidity of truth and falsity and the limitations of language to capture that illusory truth.

“Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour.”

For dramatists, perhaps. The spirit of inquiry is largely absent in America, as is any search for "truth," particularly on this holiday weekend. Solemn words will fill the air, ceremonials staged and "Taps" played to honor our nation's military dead. The vast majority of these fallen enlisted out of a sense of honor, duty and purpose. Many of us, encountering a serviceman or woman in uniform, will utter a sincere, "Thank you for your service." So Memorial Day is traditionally a day to remember, to take stock, to honor the fallen, and to tell ourselves that they have not fallen in vain. We trust and believe in what we are told, and feel better about ourselves.

What we are unwilling to do is to examine the foreign policy of the Empire that deploys these overwhelmingly working class heroes. We offer a moment of silence in memory of past wars, then race to the grill, or the mall to take advantage of Memorial Day sales. Never do we consider the context of those wars– or the next.

In an essay published yesterday, Paul Craig Roberts offers up a cautionary note: As Our Past Wars Are Glorified This Memorial Day Weekend, Give Some Thought To Our Prospects Against The Russians And Chinese In World War III. He doesn't much like our chances:

“It is extraordinary to see the confidence that many Americans place in their military’s ability. After 15 years the US has been unable to defeat a few lightly armed Taliban, and after 13 years the situation in Iraq remains out of control. This is not very reassuring for the prospect of taking on Russia, much less the strategic alliance between Russia and China. The US could not even defeat China, a Third World country at the time, in Korea 60 years ago.

“Americans need to pay attention to the fact that “their” government is a collection of crazed stupid fools likely to bring vaporization to the United States and all of Europe.

“Russian weapons systems are far superior to American ones. American weapons are produced by private companies for the purpose of making vast profits. The capability of the weapons is not the main concern. There are endless cost overruns that raise the price of US weapons into outer space.”

Whether it's dick-waving via the Stennis carrier group in the South China Sea, fomenting coups in Brazil, guarding the militarized poppy fields of Afghanistan to protect its prime export crop for domestic US consumption, or staging war games in eastern Europe within sight of the Russian border, we are sliding slow motion into global war on multiple fronts with virtually no public debate. Of course, when you are broke, war is the ultimate "reset button." It buries a multitude of bodies, both literal and financial, and puts the squeeze on tax donkeys to pay the bills, cleans up the balance sheets of the banks.

If, in Pinter's words, "The search is clearly what drives the endeavour," we Americans have decided to sit this one out. Thinking is hard.

In a recent article well worth reading, Silencing America as it prepares for war, John Pilger outlines the case. As we honor our fallen dead and extoll the virtues of those serving, civilian casualties from Vietnam to Iraq and Syria, to Yemen and Honduras, Libya to Ukraine are swept under history's rug and those paying the freight are properly propagandized.

“The 2016 election campaign is remarkable not only for the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but also for the resilience of an enduring silence about a murderous self-bestowed divinity. A third of the members of the United Nations have felt Washington's boot, overturning governments, subverting democracy, imposing blockades and boycotts. Most of the presidents responsible have been liberal – Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.

“The breathtaking record of perfidy is so mutated in the public mind, wrote the late Harold Pinter, that it "never happened …Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. It didn't matter… ". Pinter expressed a mock admiration for what he called "a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."

“Take Obama. As he prepares to leave office, the fawning has begun all over again. He is "cool". One of the more violent presidents, Obama gave full reign to the Pentagon war-making apparatus of his discredited predecessor. He prosecuted more whistleblowers – truth-tellers – than any president. He pronounced Chelsea Manning guilty before she was tried. Today, Obama runs an unprecedented worldwide campaign of terrorism and murder by drone.”

And with six months to go until a Presidential election, we have no meaningful debate. Only Trump has challenged the neocon articles of faith: Why is the US "everywhere on the globe"? Why do we have over 700 foreign bases? What is NATO's true mission? Why does the US taxpayer have to foot the bill? Why does the US always pursue regime change in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine? Why treat Russia and Vladimir Putin as an enemy? It will be interesting to see if any such questions are asked in upcoming debates, or whether the stage managers will want to risk breaking the mass hypnosis.

Another thing that we are sleeping through is that we are upping the ante regarding use of nuclear weapons in warfare. Pilger also points this out.

“No American president has built more nuclear warheads than Obama. He is "modernising" America's doomsday arsenal, including a new "mini" nuclear weapon, whose size and "smart" technology, says a leading general, ensure its use is "no longer unthinkable".

“James Bradley, the best-selling author of Flags of Our Fathers and son of one of the US marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, said, "[One] great myth we're seeing play out is that of Obama as some kind of peaceful guy who's trying to get rid of nuclear weapons. He's the biggest nuclear warrior there is. He's committed us to a ruinous course of spending a trillion dollars on more nuclear weapons. Somehow, people live in this fantasy that because he gives vague news conferences and speeches and feel-good photo-ops that somehow that's attached to actual policy. It isn't."

“In Asia, the Pentagon is sending ships, planes and special forces to the Philippines to threaten China. The US already encircles China with hundreds of military bases that curve in an arc up from Australia, to Asia and across to Afghanistan. Obama calls this a "pivot".

“As a direct consequence, China reportedly has changed its nuclear weapons policy from no-first-use to high alert and put to sea submarines with nuclear weapons. The escalator is quickening.”

Remember the public debate on this? Me, neither. Yet our warlike posture is not a recent development. An all-but-forgotten American hero, Smedley Darlington Butler (1881 – 1940) defined the truth many years ago. Butler was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps, an outspoken critic of U.S. military adventurism, and at death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. Memorial Day is a good and fitting day to remember a real hero like Butler.

After his retirement from the Marine Corps, Gen. Butler made a nationwide tour in the early 1930s speaking on the theme, "War is a Racket." The speech was so well received that he wrote a small book with the same title published in 1935. In it, he described the workings of the military-industrial complex and, after retiring from service, became a popular speaker at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s.

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.… It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

That last statement is as close as we are likely to come to an eternal truth.

A little known and much obscured part of American history is the attempted Business Plot against Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the beginning of the New Deal. Conservatives were not only exercised at the notion of "creeping socialism" by the election of FDR, but also by the abandonment of the gold standard. Herbert Hoover, who had championed the standard on behalf of his sponsors, wrote "that its abandonment was the first step toward "communism, fascism, socialism, statism, planned economy," not to mention popery, bestiality, witchcraft and free love.

The forces of actual fascism, a group of wealthy industrialists, apparently planned a military coup to overthrow Roosevelt, and approached Butler to play a role. The conspirators apparently noted his popularity among World War I veterans (itself based Butler's support for the Bonus Army movement, in which vets marched on Washington for promised back pay, and who were dispersed by Hoover and the General-In-Charge, one Douglas MacArthur.)

The plotters quickly learned they had the wrong man. Butler reported the controversy to Congress, who held a hearing. The purported plot would have had Butler leading a mass of armed veterans on Washington. The individuals identified denied the existence of a plot, and the media ridiculed the allegations. The committee's final report stated that there was evidence of such a plot, but no charges were ever filed. (More here.) Remember that in 1934-35, American industrialists smiled at the good works of Hitler and Mussolini and their cost-saving efficiencies.

At the end of his book, Butler made three recommendations, which fell on deaf ears then as now:

1. Making war unprofitable. Butler suggests that the owners of capital should be "conscripted" before other citizens are: "The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nation's manhood can be conscripted. … Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our steel companies and our munitions makers and our ship-builders …that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted — to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get"

2. Acts of war to be decided by those who fight it. He also suggests a limited plebiscite to determine if the war is to be fought. Eligible to vote would be those who risk death on the front lines.

3. Limitation of militaries to self-defense. For the United States, Butler recommends that the navy be limited by law to within 200 miles of the coastline, and the army restricted to the territorial limits of the country, ensuring that war, if fought, can never be one of aggression.

Clearly, we didn't listen. On this Memorial Day, when neocons still hold the reins of our war policy (not a "foreign policy" any longer) and are willing to fight the next war to YOUR last son or daughter, I can think of no greater tribute to our men and women in uniform than to recall the memory of Smedley Butler, the only soldier to ever be awarded TWO Congressional Medals of Honor.

And for the last word, Paul Craig Roberts:

“It is entirely possible that the world is being led to destruction by nothing more than the greed of the US military-security complex. Delighted that the reckless and stupid Obama regime has resurrected the Cold War, thus providing a more convincing “enemy” than the hoax terrorist one, the “Russian threat” has been restored to its 20th century role of providing a justification for bleeding the American taxpayer, social services, and the US economy dry in behalf of profits for armament manufacturers.

“All of America’s wars except the first—the war for independence—were wars for Empire. Keep that fact in mind as you hear the Memorial Day bloviations about the brave men and women who served our country in its times of peril. The United States has never been in peril, but Washington has delivered peril to numerous other countries in its pursuit of hegemony over others.”

Support the troops: bring them home. All of them.

Surly1 is an administrator and contributing author to Doomstead Diner. He is the author of numerous rants, articles and spittle-flecked invective on this site, and has been active in the Occupy movement. He lives in Southeastern Virginia with his wife Contrary and is the proud parent of a recent college graduate.

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