By Brazil Stock Guide – Americanas (B3: AMER3), the Brazilian retailer awaiting court approval to exit bankruptcy protection, has formally closed a R$500 million arbitration brought by minority shareholders, although several of the same investors are pursuing a separate R$12.8 billion claim against the company and figures linked to its former controlling group.
An arbitration panel issued a decision on July 16 approving the claimants’ withdrawal and terminating the proceeding without ruling on the merits, Americanas said in a securities filing on Monday.
The panel ordered the claimants to reimburse Americanas for administrative costs, arbitrators’ fees and expenses related to a challenge committee. The company did not disclose how much it expects to recover.
Americanas was unsuccessful, however, in seeking reimbursement of its contractual legal fees, an award of prevailing-party fees and a penalty against the claimants for alleged bad-faith litigation. The decision remains subject to requests for clarification.
The proceeding, known as CAM 236/23, was initiated in January 2023 by the Ibero-American Institute of Enterprise and six individual investors: Charles Xavier Gois Dantas, Fabiana dos Reis Saorin, Francisco Airton Duarte Filho, Francisco Rubens Leite Curinga, Naiguel Sassi and Victor Revoredo Vasconcelos.
The claimants sought compensation for losses allegedly suffered by investors following the disclosure of the accounting scandal that pushed Americanas into bankruptcy protection. The defendants included the retailer, 3G Capital, Brazilian billionaires Jorge Paulo Lemann, Carlos Sicupira and Marcel Telles, and investment vehicles associated with them.
The R$500 million figure was a provisional amount assigned to the claim rather than necessarily an accounting provision recognized by Americanas. Because the proceeding was terminated without a ruling on the merits, the decision does not clear the company or the other defendants of responsibility for the accounting scandal.
The withdrawal also did not end the broader dispute. Five of the individual claimants abandoned the original arbitration on Jan. 8, 2026, and launched a new proceeding the following day alongside other investors. The new case, CAM 318/26, carries a provisional value of R$12.8 billion.
That arbitration seeks compensation for investors who allegedly overpaid for Americanas shares based on fraudulent financial statements between at least 2013 and the end of 2023. It also seeks to hold the company’s former reference shareholders and certain former board and fiscal council members responsible for losses allegedly suffered by investors and Americanas itself.
The latest announcement removes an older legal proceeding and shifts some of its costs away from Americanas, but it does little to reduce the larger litigation risk still hanging over the retailer as it awaits a court ruling on its request to exit bankruptcy protection.
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