Brazil is the first Latin American jurisdiction in this series, and it turns on a single word that Congress deliberately removed from a statute. Under Law 11.638/2007, any Brazilian company classed as a sociedade de grande porte — total assets above R$240 million or gross annual revenue above R$300 million — must keep formal accounting records, prepare full financial statements to the standard required of listed companies, and have them independently audited by an auditor registered with the securities regulator. It does not have to publish them. The original bill said it did; the word publicação was struck out during passage, and Brazil's Superior Court of Justice has since confirmed that large limited companies are under no publication obligation. The result is a country that audits its large private companies to listed-company standards and then keeps the results private — while giving away, for free, ownership data that most of Europe charges for.
Two layers: one federal, twenty-seven state
Brazilian company data sits in two systems that serve different purposes, and you need both.
How a Brazilian company is registered
Corporate documents live at state level; identity, status and ownership live in the federal CNPJ database. The CNPJ is the key that joins them.
- The Juntas Comerciais — 27 of them, one per state plus the Federal District — register Sociedade Limitada (Ltda), Sociedade Anônima (S.A.), Empresário Individual, branches of foreign companies, and other commercial entities. They are coordinated federally by DREI through the REDESIM network. Certified extracts typically cost R$30 to R$150, and APIs are available in some states.
- The CNPJ — the Cadastro Nacional de Pessoas Jurídicas, created in 1998 and maintained by the Receita Federal. It is a 14-digit number in the format 00.623.904/0001-73: an eight-digit entity identifier, a four-digit branch identifier, and two check digits. Every legal entity is enrolled automatically on incorporation.
- Non-commercial entities — associations, foundations, and non-profits — register with the Registro Civil das Pessoas Jurídicas, not the Junta Comercial, so they sit outside a commercial-register search entirely.
The CNPJ solves the fragmentation problem
Brazil has the same structural shape as Canada — state-level incorporation with no single national commercial register — but avoids Canada's central data problem, because the federal CNPJ gives every entity one national identifier regardless of the state it registered in, and the CNPJ database is free and publicly searchable.
That is a meaningful advantage. Canada's fourteen registries have no unifying key, so entity resolution is a matching exercise. In Brazil, the CNPJ is the single most important identifier for cross-system verification, and the branch suffix means head office and branches resolve cleanly against the same eight-digit root. Fragmentation exists at the document layer, not the identity layer.
What the free CNPJ record gives you
- Legal name, trade name, CNPJ, and legal form, plus registration date and address.
- Status — active, suspended, unfit, closed — and the reason for any non-active status.
- Economic activity codes (CNAE), primary and secondary.
- Share capital.
- The QSA — Quadro de Sócios e Administradores: the table of partners and administrators. For a Sociedade Limitada, the partners and administrators are shown, with tax IDs partially masked. For a Sociedade Anônima, shareholders are generally not shown.
Access is free, with no account or local ID required, though a captcha applies and the interface is only partially in English. Turnaround runs from instant download to a few business days depending on what you order.
The corporate landscape and its regulators
The sectoral shape
- Agribusiness — Brazil is among the world's largest exporters of soy, beef, sugar, coffee, and poultry. Much of the sector sits in private companies and cooperatives that publish nothing, and rural producers were specifically brought into the insolvency regime by the 2020 reform.
- Mining and metals — Vale and a deep iron ore, bauxite, and niobium complex.
- Oil, gas and energy — Petrobras, the pre-salt offshore fields, and one of the world's largest renewable electricity mixes.
- Banking — a concentrated sector led by Itaú Unibanco, Bradesco, Banco do Brasil, Caixa, and Santander Brasil, all regulated by the Banco Central.
- Industry, retail and services — a large domestic economy, overwhelmingly served by Ltdas and MEIs.
Who regulates what
- Receita Federal — the federal tax authority: issues and maintains the CNPJ, and holds the tax filings that contain the financial detail large private companies do not publish.
- DREI — the national department coordinating the 27 state Juntas Comerciais through REDESIM.
- CVM — the securities regulator: listed-company disclosure, and the register of auditors qualified to audit grande porte companies.
- Banco Central do Brasil — monetary policy and supervision of financial institutions.
- CADE — the competition authority, whose merger filings are a public source of otherwise-unavailable financial information about private Brazilian groups.
- SUSEP — insurance supervision.
Accounting standards: the CPC
Brazilian accounting standards are issued by the Comitê de Pronunciamentos Contábeis (CPC), established to consolidate standard-setting and drive convergence with IFRS. CPC pronouncements are then made mandatory by the bodies that adopt them — the CVM for listed companies, the Banco Central for financial institutions, and the federal accounting council for the profession generally. A separate simplified standard, CPC PME, applies to small and medium-sized entities and mirrors the IFRS for SMEs framework.
The practical consequence is favourable: because Law 11.638/2007 was the convergence instrument and the CPC maintains alignment, Brazilian financial statements — where you can obtain them — are directly comparable with European IFRS filings, with no reconciliation of the kind US GAAP requires.
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Private companies: the word Congress deleted
This is the heart of Brazilian company data, and it has a legislative history worth knowing precisely — because it explains a gap that otherwise looks like an oversight.
What Law 11.638/2007 requires
Article 3 of Law 11.638/2007 extends to sociedades de grande porte — expressly including those not constituted as joint-stock companies — the provisions of the Corporations Law (Law 6.404/1976) on bookkeeping, preparation of financial statements, and mandatory independent audit by an auditor registered with the CVM, Brazil's securities regulator.
The word that was removed
The publication requirement: a twenty-five year story
How Brazil came to audit its large private companies without publishing them.
Most jurisdictions in the audit-but-don't-publish group never had a publication rule. Brazil wrote one, removed it, litigated it for fifteen years, and confirmed the removal. The gap is a settled policy choice, not an oversight.
A deliberate legislative choice, confirmed by the courts
Article 3 mentions bookkeeping, preparation of financial statements, and independent audit. It does not mention publication. That omission was not an accident. The original bill — Projeto de Lei 3.741/2000, which became Law 11.638/2007 — did contain a publication obligation. Congress deliberately removed it during passage.
For years afterwards the point was litigated, with some Juntas Comerciais requiring proof of publication as a condition of filing corporate acts. Brazil's Superior Tribunal de Justiça has since resolved it: large limited companies are not obliged to publish their financial statements. As the reasoning went, what the legislature deliberately excluded cannot be reinstated by administrative practice or expansive interpretation.
The consequence for a data consumer is precise and worth carrying: a large Brazilian private company almost certainly has audited financial statements prepared to listed-company standards — and is under no obligation to let you see them. Their absence tells you nothing about the company. It is the settled state of Brazilian law.
Who publishes, and who does not
| Entity type | Prepares accounts | Audited | Published |
|---|---|---|---|
| Companhia aberta (listed S.A.) | Yes — full | Yes | Yes — free at the CVM |
| Sociedade de grande porte (Ltda or closed S.A. above the thresholds) | Yes — to listed-company standards | Yes — CVM-registered auditor | No |
| Ordinary Ltda / SLU | Keeps books | Not required | No |
| Closed S.A. below the thresholds | Yes, per the Corporations Law | Not automatically | Limited |
| Empresário Individual (sole trader) | Keeps books | No | No, unless grande porte |
| MEI and Simples Nacional micro/small entities | Simplified records | No | No |
| Sucursal (branch of a foreign company) | Brazilian books | Per local rules | Filings at the Junta; parent obligations may apply |
Note the form changes worth knowing for data work. The EIRELI was abolished in 2021 by Law 14.195/2021 and existing EIRELIs were converted automatically into SLU — single-member limited companies — so an EIRELI appearing in your data indicates a record predating that conversion. The MEI micro-entrepreneur regime accounts for a very large share of Brazil's registered entity population and publishes nothing at all.
Public companies: the CVM
Where Brazil does publish, it publishes well. Companhias abertas — publicly traded companies — file with the Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM), Brazil's securities regulator, where financial statements and reports are free to consult. Listed companies trade on B3, the São Paulo exchange formed from the merger of BM&FBovespa and Cetip.
- Full financial statements — balance sheet, income statement, cash flow, statement of changes in equity, and for listed companies the demonstração do valor adicionado (statement of value added), a Brazilian requirement with few international parallels.
- Audited by a CVM-registered independent auditor.
- IFRS — Law 11.638/2007 was itself the convergence instrument, aligning Brazilian financial statements with international standards. Brazilian listed accounts are therefore directly comparable with European IFRS filings.
- Free public access through the CVM's systems.
The listed population is a rounding error against the register
Brazil's listed market is small relative to the size of its economy and tiny relative to its register. Against millions of registered entities, the companies filing full public financial statements at the CVM number in the hundreds. The overwhelming majority of Brazilian commercial activity — including the entire grande porte tier, which is audited to listed-company standards — leaves no public financial record.
This is the same shape as Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the opposite of India, where universal filing produces millions of public statements. What distinguishes Brazil is that the gap is documented as a deliberate legislative decision rather than an absence of rules. Congress wrote the audit requirement and struck out the publication requirement in the same statute.
The scale of the register
The Brazilian government publishes company statistics through the Mapa de Empresas, a Ministry of Development, Industry, Commerce and Services portal that reports company openings, closures, and the active stock. The headline count runs to tens of millions of active entities — but the figure needs careful handling, because more than half of it is MEIs, the micro-entrepreneur regime.
Filter before you count
A raw Brazilian entity count is one of the most misleading numbers in this series. The MEI regime — designed to formalise individual micro-entrepreneurs — accounts for over half of registered entities, and MEIs are one-person operations with simplified records, no audit, and no publication. Counting them alongside Ltdas and S.A.s produces a figure that describes labour formalisation policy rather than the corporate economy.
For any commercial dataset, filter by legal form first: Ltda, SLU, S.A., and Empresário Individual are the commercial population; MEI is a separate phenomenon. Take the current figures from the Mapa de Empresas directly and state which forms your count includes — this guide does not quote a single headline number precisely because the aggregate is so easily misread.
Insolvency: and the one route that forces disclosure
Brazilian corporate distress runs on Law 11.101/2005, enacted on 9 February 2005, which regulates recuperação judicial (judicial recovery), recuperação extrajudicial (out-of-court recovery), and falência (bankruptcy). It was substantially modernised by Law 14.112/2020, published on 24 December 2020 and in force from 23 January 2021.
- Eligibility — Article 48 requires the debtor to have carried on business regularly for more than two years, among other conditions. The 2020 reform gave rural producers specific treatment, allowing them to prove the qualifying period through the digital rural cash book and tax declarations.
- On admission, the judge appoints a judicial administrator, suspends actions and enforcement against the debtor, and orders the debtor to present monthly demonstrative accounts for the duration of the recovery — on pain of removal of its administrators.
- The plan must be presented within 60 days of admission. Tax and labour credits sit outside the plan under their own regimes.
- The 2020 reform introduced new financing routes, simplified procedures including electronic auctions, and removed the requirement to produce tax clearance certificates in order to contract with the public sector — which had previously made judicial recovery impractical for companies dependent on government contracts.
- Volume is at a record. Judicial recovery filings in 2024 rose 61% on 2023, the highest on record. Success rates nevertheless remain low.
Judicial recovery is the exception to Brazil's disclosure gap
Here is the connection worth carrying away. Brazil's large private companies are audited and do not publish — but a company that enters recuperação judicial must present accounting documents, a creditor list, and financial statements to the court, and must then file monthly demonstrative accounts throughout the process.
In other words, judicial recovery is one of the few mechanisms that forces a private Brazilian company's financial position into a public record — and with filings up 61% in 2024, it is a growing one. For a credit or restructuring team, court records in a judicial recovery are often the only route to numbers that Law 11.638/2007 leaves unpublished. It is a grim way to obtain financial data, but in Brazil it is a real one.
Distributions: the legal reserve and the mandatory dividend
Brazil's Corporations Law (Law 6.404/1976) constrains distributions in two ways that shape how Brazilian equity should be read. A company must appropriate 5% of net profit each year to a legal reserve (reserva legal) until that reserve reaches 20% of share capital, and the reserve is not freely distributable. Separately — and unusually by international standards — the law provides for a mandatory minimum dividend (dividendo mínimo obrigatório), set in the articles, with a statutory default applying where the articles are silent.
For a data consumer, two reading points follow. A Brazilian company's equity line is not a distributable figure, as in Portugal and Greece rather than Australia or New Zealand. And the mandatory minimum dividend means Brazilian payout behaviour is partly a legal artefact rather than purely a management choice — a low payout ratio at a Brazilian company carries different information than it would elsewhere.
Sustainability reporting
Brazil moved early on international sustainability standards. The CVM has adopted the ISSB's IFRS S1 and S2 for listed companies, on a voluntary basis initially and becoming mandatory from 2026, placing Brazil among the first movers globally and ahead of several jurisdictions covered in this series. Because the rules have been amended since adoption, check the current CVM resolution for the applicable scope, phasing, and assurance requirements rather than relying on any secondary summary, including this one. As elsewhere, the obligation attaches to listed companies — it does nothing for the grande porte private tier.
Four pitfalls in Brazilian financial data workflows
Pitfall 1: Assuming audit means publication
Grande porte companies are audited to listed-company standards and publish nothing. The word "publication" was deliberately removed from Law 11.638/2007 and the STJ has confirmed the position. Absence of accounts is settled law, not a finding about the company.
Pitfall 2: Counting MEIs as companies
More than half of Brazil's registered entities are micro-entrepreneurs under the MEI regime. Including them in a corporate count overstates the commercial population by a wide margin. Filter by legal form before counting anything.
Pitfall 3: Expecting S.A. shareholders in the CNPJ record
The QSA shows partners and administrators for a Sociedade Limitada but generally not shareholders of a Sociedade Anônima. Brazil is unusually open on Ltda ownership and closed on S.A. ownership — the form determines what you get.
Pitfall 4: Searching only one layer
The CNPJ database gives identity, status, activity codes, capital, and partners. Corporate documents — articles, amendments, minutes — sit at the state Junta Comercial, and non-profits sit in the civil registry entirely. Route the question to the right layer.
How Brazil compares
| Jurisdiction | Large private company accounts | Ownership data | Structure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brazil | Audited, not published — by legislative choice | Free — partners of Ltdas via CNPJ | 27 state registries + federal CNPJ key |
| Hong Kong | Audited, not published | Paid — HK$22 per search | One registry, no API |
| Taiwan | Audited, not published | Free — with shareholdings, hourly API | One registry, four authorities |
| Canada | Not required at all | Varies by province | 14 registries, no unifying key |
| India | Universal filing, publicly inspectable | Free master data | One registry, one CIN |
Brazil sits with Hong Kong and Taiwan in the audit-but-don't-publish group, and with Canada on federated registration — but it handles the second problem far better than Canada does, because the CNPJ provides the national key that Canada's fourteen registries lack. Its distinctive feature is the legislative history: most jurisdictions in this group never had a publication requirement. Brazil drafted one and took it out.
Where to find it, what it costs, and how many companies file
The sources, layer by layer
| What you need | Where it lives | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity, status, activity codes, capital | CNPJ database — Receita Federal, at solucoes.receita.fazenda.gov.br | Free | No account, no local ID. Captcha applies; interface partly in English. |
| Partners and administrators (QSA) | Same CNPJ record | Free | Populates for Ltda; generally not for S.A. shareholders. Tax IDs partially masked. |
| Articles of association, amendments, corporate acts | State Junta Comercial (27 of them), via REDESIM | R$30–150 per certified extract | Varies by state. Some states expose APIs. You must know which state. |
| Listed company financial statements | CVM (gov.br/cvm) and B3 | Free | Full IFRS statements, audited, plus the demonstração do valor adicionado. |
| Company openings, closures, active stock | Mapa de Empresas — Ministry of Development, Industry, Commerce and Services | Free | Aggregate statistics only, not company-level. Filter by legal form. |
| Non-profits, associations, foundations | Registro Civil das Pessoas Jurídicas | Varies | Outside the commercial register entirely — a common blind spot. |
| Merger and acquisition filings | CADE — the competition authority | Free | A public source of financial information about private groups that publish nothing. |
| Companies in judicial recovery | Court records, per the relevant state tribunal | Varies | Financial statements and monthly demonstrative accounts enter the record. |
| Private company financial statements | Nowhere public. Audited above the grande porte thresholds; filed with the Receita Federal under tax confidentiality; no publication duty. | ||
How many companies actually file financial statements
The honest answer, and the number that matters
The population of Brazilian companies publishing financial statements is essentially the listed population — companies in the hundreds, against a register of tens of millions of entities. That is the single most important number in this guide, and it is small because of the legislative choice described earlier, not because Brazilian companies are unaudited or unaccountable.
Set the layers against each other:
- Registered entities — tens of millions, per the Mapa de Empresas. More than half are MEIs.
- Commercial companies (Ltda, SLU, S.A., Empresário Individual) — the meaningful denominator, and the figure you should be quoting. Take it from the Mapa de Empresas filtered by legal form.
- Audited — every sociedade de grande porte above R$240m assets or R$300m revenue, plus listed companies, financial institutions, and regulated entities. Brazil does not publish a count of grande porte companies, and this guide does not estimate one.
- Publishing financial statements — companhias abertas only, at the CVM. Hundreds of companies.
The gap between the third and fourth lines is the whole story. A substantial population of large Brazilian companies has audited, listed-standard financial statements sitting in a drawer. If you need a current listed count, take it from B3 or the CVM directly — both publish it, and both update it more often than any secondary source.
MonetaiQ vs the Brazilian registries: what each is for
| Dimension | CNPJ / Junta Comercial / CVM | MonetaiQ |
|---|---|---|
| Legal authority | Authoritative — Junta Comercial certified extracts carry official standing | Derived — not a substitute for a certified extract |
| Cost | CNPJ search free; certified extracts R$30–150; CVM free | Subscription |
| Entity & ownership data | Good and free — status, capital, CNAE codes, and QSA partners for Ltdas | Same fields, resolved and normalised across jurisdictions |
| Listed company financials | Free at the CVM, IFRS, audited | Parsed into a common schema for cross-country comparison |
| Private company financials | Not published — even for audited grande porte companies | No provider can supply what was never published. Ask any vendor claiming otherwise whether the figures are modelled. |
| Document layer | Split across 27 state Juntas Comerciais | Joined into a single entity record via the CNPJ |
| Language | Portuguese; partial English interface, captcha | English field names and values |
Being straight about Brazil
Brazil's free tier is genuinely useful and you should use it. The CNPJ database gives you identity, status, activity codes, capital, and — for limited companies — the partners and administrators, at no cost. For verifying a Brazilian counterparty exists, checking its status, or identifying who runs it, that is often the whole job. Listed-company financials at the CVM are free and in IFRS.
On private company financials, the honest answer is the same one this series gives for Hong Kong and Taiwan: no provider can supply accounts that were never published, and any vendor claiming comprehensive Brazilian private-company financials is offering modelled or researched estimates — legitimate, but not filed data. Ask which. Where a commercial layer does earn its place in Brazil is joining 27 state document registries into one entity record via the CNPJ, delivering it in English, and normalising Brazilian IFRS filings alongside other jurisdictions in a single schema.
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Frequently asked questions
Are Brazilian company financial statements public?
Only for publicly traded companies. Companhias abertas file financial statements with the CVM, Brazil's securities regulator, where they are free to consult. Private companies — the overwhelming majority — generally do not publish their accounts, and this is the single biggest gap in Brazilian company data. Even large private companies audited to listed-company standards under Law 11.638/2007 have no publication obligation.
What is a sociedade de grande porte?
A company, or group of companies under common control, with total assets above R$240 million or gross annual revenue above R$300 million in the preceding financial year. Under Article 3 of Law 11.638/2007 such companies must follow the Corporations Law rules on bookkeeping and preparation of financial statements and must have an independent audit by an auditor registered with the CVM — regardless of whether they are constituted as joint-stock companies. A bill before Congress proposes raising the thresholds to R$440 million and R$550 million.
Do large Brazilian private companies have to publish their accounts?
No. Article 3 of Law 11.638/2007 requires bookkeeping, preparation of financial statements, and independent audit — but not publication. The word was in the original bill, Projeto de Lei 3.741/2000, and Congress deliberately removed it during passage. Brazil's Superior Tribunal de Justiça has confirmed that large limited companies are not obliged to publish, on the reasoning that what the legislature deliberately excluded cannot be reinstated by administrative practice or expansive interpretation.
What is a CNPJ?
The Cadastro Nacional de Pessoas Jurídicas, Brazil's national registry of legal entities, created in 1998 and maintained by the Receita Federal. It is a 14-digit number — an eight-digit entity identifier, a four-digit branch identifier, and two check digits, written as 00.623.904/0001-73. Every legal entity is enrolled automatically on incorporation, and it is the single most important identifier for cross-system verification in Brazil.
How much does Brazilian company information cost?
The federal CNPJ search is free, returning legal name, CNPJ, legal form, status, address, activity codes, share capital, and the QSA table of partners and administrators for limited companies. Listed company financial statements at the CVM are free. Certified extracts from the state Juntas Comerciais typically cost R$30 to R$150 per document, varying by state. Private company financial statements are not available at any price.
How many Brazilian companies publish financial statements?
Essentially only the listed ones — companies in the hundreds, against a register of tens of millions of entities. Every sociedade de grande porte above R$240 million in assets or R$300 million in revenue is independently audited, but none of them is required to publish, so a substantial audited population produces no public accounts. Brazil does not publish a count of grande porte companies. For a current listed count, take it from B3 or the CVM directly.
Where do I search for a Brazilian company?
Start with the free federal CNPJ database maintained by the Receita Federal for identity, status, activity codes, capital, and partners of limited companies. Go to the relevant state Junta Comercial via REDESIM for articles of association and corporate acts, at R$30 to R$150 per certified extract. Use the CVM and B3 for listed company financial statements, free. Note that non-profits and foundations register with the Registro Civil das Pessoas Jurídicas and sit outside the commercial register entirely.
Is the Brazilian company register free to search?
The federal CNPJ database is free and publicly searchable for all registered entities, with no account or local ID required, though a captcha applies and the English interface is partial. It returns legal name, CNPJ, legal form, status, address, activity codes, share capital, and the QSA table of partners and administrators. Certified extracts from the state Juntas Comerciais typically cost R$30 to R$150.
Can I see who owns a Brazilian company?
It depends on the form. For a Sociedade Limitada, the partners and administrators appear in the public CNPJ record through the QSA, with tax IDs partially masked — which makes Brazil more open on direct ownership than many registers. For a Sociedade Anônima, shareholders are generally not shown.
Why does Brazil have 27 company registries?
Because commercial registration is a state function. Each state and the Federal District operates its own Junta Comercial, which files the articles of association and issues the NIRE registration number, coordinated federally by DREI through the REDESIM network. Unlike Canada's fourteen registries, however, Brazil layers a single federal identifier over the top: every entity receives a CNPJ from the Receita Federal regardless of the state it registered in, so fragmentation exists at the document layer rather than the identity layer.
What is the QSA?
The Quadro de Sócios e Administradores, the table of partners and administrators shown in a company's CNPJ record. It is the main free source of Brazilian ownership information, and it populates for limited companies but generally not for shareholders of joint-stock companies.
What happened to the EIRELI?
It was abolished in 2021 by Law 14.195/2021, and existing EIRELIs were converted automatically into SLUs — single-member limited companies. An EIRELI appearing in a dataset therefore indicates a record predating that conversion, which makes the form a useful vintage marker.
Do Brazilian companies use IFRS?
Yes. Law 11.638/2007 was itself the convergence instrument, aligning Brazilian financial statements with international standards, so Brazilian listed accounts are directly comparable with European IFRS filings. Listed companies also produce a demonstração do valor adicionado, a statement of value added with few international parallels.
How many companies are there in Brazil?
The government publishes company statistics through the Mapa de Empresas portal, and the active count runs to tens of millions of entities. That figure needs careful handling: more than half of it consists of MEIs, micro-entrepreneurs under a simplified regime who keep minimal records and publish nothing. For any commercial dataset, filter by legal form — Ltda, SLU, S.A., and Empresário Individual are the commercial population — and take current figures from the Mapa de Empresas directly.
How does insolvency work in Brazil?
Under Law 11.101/2005, which regulates judicial recovery (recuperação judicial), out-of-court recovery, and bankruptcy (falência), substantially modernised by Law 14.112/2020 in force from 23 January 2021. A debtor must have traded regularly for more than two years to file. On admission the judge appoints a judicial administrator, suspends actions against the debtor, and orders monthly demonstrative accounts; the recovery plan is due within 60 days. Judicial recovery filings in 2024 rose 61% on 2023, the highest on record, though success rates remain low.
Can I get financial statements for a Brazilian company in judicial recovery?
Often yes, and it is one of the few routes available. A company entering recuperação judicial must present accounting documents, a creditor list, and financial statements to the court, and must file monthly demonstrative accounts throughout the process on pain of its administrators being removed. Since large Brazilian private companies are audited but not required to publish, court records in a judicial recovery are frequently the only public route to their numbers.
Who sets accounting standards in Brazil?
The Comitê de Pronunciamentos Contábeis (CPC), which consolidates standard-setting and drives convergence with IFRS. Its pronouncements become mandatory through the bodies that adopt them — the CVM for listed companies, the Banco Central for financial institutions, and the federal accounting council for the profession. A simplified standard, CPC PME, applies to small and medium-sized entities and mirrors IFRS for SMEs. Because Law 11.638/2007 was the convergence instrument, Brazilian statements are directly comparable with European IFRS filings.
How are dividends restricted in Brazil?
Under the Corporations Law, a company must appropriate 5% of net profit each year to a legal reserve until it reaches 20% of share capital, and that reserve is not freely distributable. Brazilian law also provides for a mandatory minimum dividend set in the articles, with a statutory default where the articles are silent — unusual by international standards. A Brazilian company's equity line is therefore not a distributable figure, and payout behaviour is partly a legal artefact rather than purely a management choice.
Does Brazil require sustainability reporting?
Yes, for listed companies. The CVM has adopted the ISSB's IFRS S1 and S2, initially on a voluntary basis and becoming mandatory from 2026, placing Brazil among the first movers globally. Because the rules have been amended since adoption, check the current CVM resolution for applicable scope, phasing, and assurance requirements. As with financial disclosure, the obligation attaches to listed companies and does nothing for the large private grande porte tier.
Which Brazilian companies must be audited?
Publicly traded companies, financial institutions, and other regulated entities have always required audit. Since Law 11.638/2007, so do sociedades de grande porte — companies with total assets above R$240 million or gross annual revenue above R$300 million — whatever their legal form, which extended mandatory audit to closed joint-stock companies and limited companies for the first time. The audit must be performed by an auditor registered with the CVM.
