An extraordinary meeting for the BRF Board of Directors that had been scheduled for March 5 has been rescheduled to run in conjunction with the annual general shareholders meeting on April 26, according to an announcement to the market posted on the BRF website.
An extraordinary board meeting had been called at the request of two major shareholders, Petros and Previ, both of which are pension fund groups. Initially, the meeting was slated for March 5. The purpose for the meeting is that Petros and Previ wanted to see all of the current directors removed.
An earlier report from Reuters stated that the shareholders wanted the board replaced after its poor financial performance during fiscal year 2017. BRF concluded its 2017 fiscal year with a net loss of BRL1.2 billion ($371 million).
However, since that time, BRF has found itself in the midst of more problems, as it faces a variety of allegations connected to the Operation Weak Flesh scandal. A number of people affiliated with BRF, including Pedro de Andrade Faria, BRF’s former global president, and Helio Santos Junior, former vice-president of global operations who resigned recently, were arrested.
Slate of potential board members
In a separate announcement to the market on the BRF website, the proposed slate of new board members for BRF was revealed.
That slate includes the nomination of Augusto Marques da Cruz Filho as chairman of the board, and Francisco Petros Oliveira Lima Papathanasiadis as the board’s vice chairman. Nominated for director positions are Walter Malieni Jr., Guilherme Afonso Ferreira, José Luiz Osório, Roberto Antônio Mendes, Dan Ioschpe, Roberto Funari;Vasco Augusto Pinto da Fonseca Dias Júnior; and Luiz Fernando Furlan.
BRF is the largest global exporter of chicken meat and the third largest broiler company in the world, according to the WATTAgNet Top Poultry Companies Database, having slaughtered more than 1.7 billion birds annually. The company is involved in both broiler and turkey production.
