By Brazil Stock Guide – Vale (NYSE: VALE; B3: VALE3) moved to remove Marcelo Gasparino da Silva from its board on Wednesday, only hours after shareholders rejected his bid to become chairman of the Brazilian mining giant.
The board unanimously approved calling a new extraordinary shareholders’ meeting to vote on Gasparino’s removal after an investigation conducted by an external independent law firm concluded that he had leaked confidential information related to a June 19 board meeting, Vale said in a securities filing.
The company did not disclose what information was leaked, who received it or how it was transmitted. Vale said the investigation’s findings were supported by its Audit and Risk Committee and by its Audit and Compliance Department.
The decision capped an extraordinary reversal for Gasparino, one of Brazil’s best-known corporate directors and a prominent advocate of minority shareholder rights. He began the day as a candidate to lead Vale’s board and ended it facing removal from the body altogether.
Shareholders elected Manuel Lino Silva de Sousa Oliveira, known as Ollie, as chairman with support from 56.4% of the shares represented at the meeting. Gasparino received 30.4%.
The vote had initially appeared to deliver a split result for Previ, the pension fund of Banco do Brasil employees. Previ backed Ollie and succeeded in changing the board’s leadership, but its nominee for a vacant board seat, José Maurício Pereira Coelho, received only 17.9% of the votes. Independent executive Ieda Gomes Yell won the seat with 68.4%.
The filing released later in the day overshadowed that outcome.
Gasparino had served as Vale’s vice-chairman since 2023 and as a full board member since 2020, after earlier periods as an alternate director. He also coordinated the People and Compensation Committee and sat on the Nomination and Governance Committee, two of the board’s most sensitive advisory bodies.
Vale removed him from both committees pending the shareholders’ decision.
The move is particularly significant because Gasparino’s professional reputation was built around corporate governance, board independence and shareholder activism. Over the past 15 years, he has accumulated more than 36 board and fiscal council mandates across some of Brazil’s largest listed companies.
He currently sits on the boards of Petrobras and Metalfrio and serves on audit and compensation committees at Banco do Brasil. His career has also included board roles at Eletrobras, Cemig, Eternit and Oncoclínicas, as well as the chairmanships of Usiminas, Eternit and Oncoclínicas.
Gasparino has participated in several landmark minority-shareholder campaigns in Brazil, including contested board elections at Vale, Petrobras and Eletrobras. He was involved in the election of alternative candidates to Vale’s board after the miner became a widely held corporation and challenged governance practices before Brazil’s securities regulator.
That history makes Vale’s accusation especially damaging. The company is effectively seeking to remove one of the country’s most prominent governance specialists for an alleged breach of one of the most basic duties of a director: preserving the confidentiality of board deliberations.
The June 19 meeting was a pivotal moment in Vale’s leadership dispute. It took place as Previ sought to replace then-chairman Daniel Stieler and as competing candidates began positioning themselves for control of the board.
Gasparino’s candidacy emerged from that process. The alleged leak therefore relates to the same succession battle in which he was directly involved and which culminated in Wednesday’s shareholder vote.
Vale has not said whether the leaked information reached the media, shareholders or another third party. It also did not identify any specific document, conversation or publication linked to the investigation.
Gasparino’s removal is not automatic. Under Brazilian corporate law, shareholders must decide whether to dismiss him from the board. The date of the new extraordinary meeting has not yet been announced.
The case transforms what had been a complex but largely orderly succession dispute into a broader test of Vale’s governance system. Investors will now have to assess not only the balance of power among major shareholders but also the integrity of decision-making inside the board itself.
Gasparino could not immediately be reached for comment. The space remains open for his response.
Read more: Vale shareholders elect Ollie as board chair in split outcome for Previ
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