1 – Assembly elects new Petrobras board, including nominee for CEO
Petrobras Shareholders’ Meeting (PETR3, PETR4) approved on Wednesday night (13) the nominees by the government and by minority shareholders for the company’s new Board of Directors, which should elect Jose Mauro Coelho to the state-owned company’s executive presidency.

Coelho, former secretary of Oil, Gas and Biofuels at the Ministry of Mines and Energy, was elected among the 11 councilors defined, according to a Petrobras statement. Approval for the board is a precondition for the executive to take charge of the company.

The approval took place after a long shareholders’ meeting, which began on Wednesday afternoon and ended late in the evening. Before the meeting began, there was agitation among minority shareholders about changes to the company’s bylaws, and the board members’ vote was also delayed by a problem with the vote count, according to two sources who followed the process.

The company said in a note that the resolution of the proposed amendment to the Bylaws to amend articles 21, 22, 23, 29, 30, 33, 35 and 40 was removed from the agenda of the meeting.

This Thursday, a meeting of the new board is scheduled to consider the nomination of Coelho to the position of president of the company – according to the company’s rules, this is how the name to occupy the command of the oil company is confirmed.

Petrobras said this week that Coelho would take office this Thursday.

Coelho was chosen by the government after President Jair Bolsonaro’s discontent with the performance of retired general Joaquim Silva e Luna in the presidency of the state-owned company, which had to sharply increase fuel prices in refineries to accompany the escalation of oil in the wake of the Ukraine war. .

Coelho, however, has won a following among market shareholders with earlier statements in support of free-market policies, such as pegging domestic fuel prices to international oil prices, rather than subsidizing the product for Brazilians.

The change of the presidency at Petrobras was tumultuous, with the first chosen by the government for the position, energy consultant Adriano Pires, giving up the post amid conflict of interest information to take charge of the company.

The meeting also approved Marcio Andrade Weber, a member of the previous administration, as the new chairman of Petrobras’ Board of Directors. He is a civil engineer with a specialization in petroleum engineering from the company, which he joined in 1976 and worked for 16 years.

Murilo Marroquim de Souza, Ruy Schneider, Sonia Villalobos, Marcelo Gasparino da Silva and Rosangela Torres (employees’ representative) were also elected to the board.

The assembly also elected Luiz Henrique Caroli and Jose Joao Abdalla Filho, the latter a billionaire who owns a considerable share of Petrobras and is among the biggest investors on the Brazilian stock exchange.