Brazzil Magazine Wednesday, 01 May 2002 Many journalists and media executives tend to believe that opening the media to foreign capital is their final hope for survival. By Paulo Rebêlo As expected, on April 4th, the Senate’s Constitution and Justice Committee has approved a bill opening up Brazilian media companies to foreign capital. Until now, a 60-year old law banned foreign ownership of the country’s media. The foreign participation cannot exceed 30 percent of the voting stockholders. Officially. This means that from now on any company in Brazil may be a major shareholder or own a media vehicle, such as radio and TV stations, newspapers, magazines, etc and have access to the stock market. Before the approval of the new law, media companies in Brazil had to be owned (officially) by a Brazilian citizen or someone naturalized Brazilian for at least ten years. That explains why the media in Brazil is commonly called a big family business, in which media companies are passed from father to son for generations. The new foreign investment law intends to help the organization and, especially, assist in getting fresh loans. The editorial policies from broadcast and newspaper companies should remain as defined in the
Tag: política
Brazzil Magazine May 1999 The Brazilian central bank burned more than a billion dollars for nothing. A Parliamentary Inquiry Commission was established, but there’s little hope that anything will change or that anybody will be punished. Paulo Rebêlo In the past month, Brazilian citizens became so excited about the possibility of having an increase in their minimum wage that they all seemed to forget the economic and “image” problems the government was facing with its own electors and, as usual, the international investors. The country has summoned the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (PIC) in order to investigate supposed corruption between Banco Central do Brasil (Central Bank of Brazil) and two other minor banks, which could have earned millions of dollars atypically via a strange secret transaction. The Real (Brazilian currency) was devaluated in the beginning of 1999 because Central Bank wasn’t able to hold the currency value against ferocious investors anymore. This left those people whose contracts were based on the American dollar in trouble, not to mention taxes, including importing and exporting actions. Up until this point, one dollar (US$1.00) had a value of almost one Real (R$1.00)—about $1.20 Reals for each dollar. In only a few days, the currency