Americanas warns malls that it will not pay late rents for physical stores

A Americans started notifying malls where there are physical stores that rents due up to the date of approval of the request for judicial recovery, on January 19, will not be paid, due to the effect of suspension of charges conferred by the judicial recovery. The company owes R$ 11.6 million to shopping malls spread across different regions of the country. In a statement, the company points out that the eventual payment of the rent by January 19 "would imply a practice of favoring the creditor" and that the credits prior to the request for recovery have their enforceability suspended. Payments whose competence comprises the period from January 20 to 31, 2023 will be made throughout this month. In a note, the company stated that "the rental amounts due and not paid by the date of the Judicial Reorganization request constitute debts that will follow the requirements of the process, which prevents it from making payments whose origin event is prior to the beginning of the request made . For events subsequent to the beginning of the recovery, the company's operations continue as normal."

In the list of creditors submitted to the court, the ten largest creditor malls account for almost 80% of Americanas' outstanding debts with the sector. The retailer's biggest debt, of R$ 2.6 million, is with Shopping Pantanal, in Cuiabá (MT), belonging to the Ancar group. Next comes the Esplanada de Sorocaba (SP) mall, by Iguatemi, whose pending Americanas is R$ 1.6 million. If this figure is added to R$ 741 thousand pending with Shopping Iguatemi in São Paulo, Americanas' debt with the group adds up to R$ 2.364 million. In third place in the ranking of mall creditors is Grupo AD, with R$ 2.103 million to be paid, referring to Penha (R$ 1.170 million), ABC (R$ 660 thousand) and Praça da Moça malls in Diadema, São Paulo (R$ 273 thousand ).

For lawyer Diego Amaral, specialist in Real Estate Law and partner at Dias & Amaral Advogados Associados, the request for suspension of debt collection is normal. “In judicial recovery, the idea is that the company recovers in order to be able to pay its creditors in an adequate period. In two years, the company will organize itself to pay what it owes. However, most of the time, judicial recovery fails to recover the company and ends up progressing to bankruptcy. In this case, there is an order of debts that must be paid if there are credits to do so: labor debts and debts with banks, among others, until you reach debts linked to civil relations, such as lease contracts”, he clarifies.

Also, this Thursday, the 16th, the company met with creditors to reach an agreement for the payment of debts. Americanas presented “a proposal contemplating a capital increase in cash, with the support of its reference shareholders, in the amount of R$ 7 billion reais (considering the DIP financing already contributed that would be converted into capital), debt repurchase by company in the order of R$12 billion and the conversion of financial debts in the total amount of approximately R$ 18 billion reais, part in capital and part in subordinated debt. So far, there has been no agreement on the proposal presented,” the company said.

*With information from Estadão Content