On April 27, the Association of Capital Market Investors – Amec – held its Annual and Extraordinary Shareholders’ Meeting, during which members approved the proposal to change the association’s corporate governance structure. The Advisory Board was created, with mandate to evaluate Amec’s work on a long-term perspective; help prepare the association’s strategic planning and submit, to the Board of Directors, its recommendations about all aspects related to the association’s work.

The recently-created Advisory Board is comprised of five members, three of whom with recognized knowledge and supportive of Amec’s objectives, and two members of the Board of Directors, one of whom the Chairman.

On May 12, Porto Seguro joined the group of Amec’s members. Porto Seguro is a Brazilian company that has been operating in the market for more than 70 years and is one of the country’s major insurance firms and the largest one in the car and household insurance segment. Today, it has approximately 8 million clients, 15,000 employees, 18,000 service vendors and 30,000 partner brokers. In 2016, it had net sales of $923 million reais.

The Association of Capital Market Investors – Amec – sent to the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission – CVM – a contribution to the public hearing of the Office of the Superintendent of Accounting Standards – SNC 01/17, responsible for the update of the CVM Instruction 308/99, especially with respect to the work of independent auditors. As CVM itself mentions in the public notice, an update is necessary as the instruction was issued more than 17 years ago and significant changes have taken place since then.

The paper “An Assessment of Dual-Class Shares in Brazil”, prepared by the professor Pedro Matos from the Darden School of Economics, University of Virginia, was launched on May 9. The study is the result of a partnership between Amec and the CFA Institute and investigates the empirical evidences in terms of the valuation vs. the operating performance of companies listed in the Novo Mercado – that follow the one-share, one-vote principle – and those not listed in the special segment.

On May 28, Amec sent a letter to the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission – CVM – presenting additional arguments about the need of a review of the regulator’s position regarding the access to the shareholders’ list by investors. Since 2009, the association has been consistently advocating that the law should ensure that shareholders have access to the shareholders’ list so that they can exercise their rights, including political rights, before the invested companies. Additionally, the current scenario brings about a lack of symmetry in which the management and the controlling shareholder have access to this information, unlike minority shareholders.

The IBRI – Brazilian Investor Relations Institute – will be celebrating its 20^th anniversary in a ceremony to take place at B3 headquarters (Rua XV de Novembro, 275 – ground floor – São Paulo – SP) on June 5, 2017, at 7 am.