Amec Seminar – the association’s major annual event – had its name changed and, from this year on, it’s called Amec Investor Forum. This change reflects the propositional style that has been characterizing previous editions, a result of a healthy debate environment. Additionally, Amec has partnered with Insper, one of Brazil’s most important higher education institutions that made its auditorium available for the event. The Forum will take place on May 28. “The Investor Forum reflects the evolution of Amec in its role of collaborating with concrete solutions for the challenges in the Brazilian capital market and minority shareholders. The partnership with Insper provides our debates with even more quality and content,” explains Mauro Rodrigues da Cunha, CEO of Amec.

This year, the forum is entitled “Form X Essence – The Challenges of Investing in Brazil.” Amec suggests frank and innovative debates about the most pressing topics affecting investors, including issues such as restructuring transactions, appraisal reports, management fiduciary duties, management compensation, damages and compensation to investors, and stewardship.

On March 20, Amec – the Association of Capital Market Investors – published a Notice to the Market criticizing suggested and already created transactions that have been leading to disparities, mainly among common and preferred shareholders.

Amec – the Association of Capital Market Investors – has carefully analyzed corporate governance-related issues in Petrobras that have contributed to the current scenario, broadly announced by the press. Economists and lawyers of the associations’ technical team, as well as board members, analyzed and discussed each point of the case. Based on these analyses, the association published, on March 11, its arguments and conclusions about the company’s corporate governance problems and their implications for the domestic market.

On March 9, the Brazilian Securities Exchange Commission (CVM) launched its new portal with innovations in the access to information and in browseability terms. According to the CEO of CVM, Leonardo Pereira, the reformulation is part of the Strategic Planning started in 2013 that, since then, has been guiding several of the regulator’s activities.

The Brazilian Institute of Corporate Governance – IBGC - issued a new opinion letter positioning itself about the governance in companies controlled by the federal, state, local, and the Federal District governments. In this first document addressing the topic, IBGC suggests recommendations on two sensitive points.

On March 6, the Chilean Elmostrador newspaper put the merger between Itaú and CorpBanca at stake, claiming internal disputes and issues raised by market participants.

Internal compliance controls at firms regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will get more scrutiny this year. According to SEC enforcement director, Andrew Ceresney, the regulator will be more active in this area in the coming months.

According to an article published by Reuters, TIAA-CREF, one of the largest U.S. assets manager, is asking the top 100 companies in which it invests to make it easier for shareholders to nominate board candidates.

According to Bloomerg, the Bank of America has decided to allow long-term investors to nominate candidates to its board of directors, meeting the growing demand by institutional investors to have broader access to the proxy voting process. The decision allows groups of investors with less than 3 percent of the capital to make independent nominations, despite the inexistence of such legislation in the USA.

On May 19 and 20, ANBIMA (Brazilian Financial and Capital Market Association) will be holding its 8^th Congress of Investment Funds in São Paulo.