Raízen is trying to solve a R$65 billion crisis with new money. Its creditors also want to inject capital, but they are demanding equity and a new governance structure in return. Standing between those two positions is Rubens Ometto, the founder of Cosan and chairman of Raízen. The question hanging over the company’s restructuring is no longer only how much capital will come in. It is how much it is worth to keep Ometto in command — and how much it would cost to remove him.
Ometto is not an executive who can be easily replaced in a creditor spreadsheet. At 76, he carries a rare business biography. He built Cosan from sugar and ethanol, took a company from Brazil’s interior to the stock market, and expanded the group into fuels, logistics, gas, energy and infrastructure. With Shell, he created Raízen, one of the world’s largest integrated bioenergy companies.
Brazil produces fewer business leaders like Rubens Ometto than it once did. The country has few entrepreneurs capable of turning family-controlled businesses into relevant corporate groups while sustaining a long-term vision in an environment marked by high interest rates, unstable regulation and unpredictable politics. Owner-led companies often have direction. Controlling shareholders cross cycles, sustain investments against the tide, take bold decisions and imprint corporate culture. Raízen may never have existed without that kind of leadership.
Ometto also cultivated a narrative worthy of the empire he built. His biography, written by Aguinaldo Silva — one of Brazil’s best-known soap-opera writers — presents “the man and the ideas” behind an “exemplary case of corporate success,” an “inconformist” capable of inspiring leaders in Brazil and abroad. The language matters. It shows how Cosan’s story was told as an extension of its founder’s personality. That is not necessarily a flaw. Great owner-led companies are often born from that mix of vision, ego and execution. But scarcity makes Ometto important to Raízen — perhaps more important than creditors would like to admit.
Rarity, however, is not the same as infallibility. The risk emerges when the founder’s narrative begins to shield decisions that should be tested more rigorously by the board. The problem is not having an owner. The problem is when the owner becomes too big to be corrected. A good board exists to limit excess: to stop conviction from turning into vanity — and vanity from steering the company itself.
Ometto no longer enters Raízen’s debate with the same absolute power he once had. Cosan’s attempt to build a relevant position in Vale changed the market’s perception of its risk appetite. The bet on the miner pressured the balance sheet, increased the group’s financial complexity and opened the door to a reshuffling of power. With BTG Pactual and Perfin closer to the capital structure, Cosan’s command ceased to be a purely personal construction and became more shared. Ometto lost exclusivity at Cosan.
That displacement is now showing up at Raízen. Creditors are not asking only for capital. They want equity, oversight and the ability to interfere in capital allocation. Their proposal includes using part of the proceeds from asset sales in Argentina to reduce debt, strengthen governance and remove Ometto from the leadership structure. Bondholders have pushed for an R$8 billion capital injection, according to Bloomberg. Raízen’s response follows a different logic: Shell and Ometto have already pledged R$4 billion, the company is seeking another R$2.5 billion to R$5 billion, and it accepts some monitoring — but resists changing the center of power.
That resistance is understandable — and problematic. For Raízen, removing Ometto would mean admitting that the crisis did not stem only from high interest rates, heavy capex, a weak crop, fires, operational misalignment or delayed returns on investment. It would mean recognizing that governance also became part of the bill. For creditors, keeping the same command structure may look like an expensive way to preserve an architecture they no longer want to finance without stronger checks and balances.
The paradox is that Ometto is valuable precisely because he built so much. Without him, Raízen might not exist in its current form. With him, creditors fear the company may remain trapped in the logic that led it into one of Brazil’s largest recent out-of-court restructuring processes. Raízen is offering capital to preserve the experience of an industrial captain. Creditors want to put in money, convert debt into equity and impose a leadership change. Between those two positions lies the price of Rubens Ometto.
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