BRB overturns injunction from the Federal District Court that prevented the completion of the purchase of Banco Master

Banco de Brasília (BRB) has managed to overturn the injunction that prevented it from closing the purchase of Banco Master , announced at the end of March. In a decision published on the evening of Friday, the 9th, Judge João Egmont Leôncio Lopes decided to suspend the injunction granted to the Public Civil Action filed by the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Federal District and Territories (MPDFT), which blocked the signing of the definitive contract for the purchase by BRB of Master Holding Financeira, CV Holding Financeira and Daniel Vorcaro.

This package includes 75% of the bank's net equity, for which BRB estimated it would pay R$2 billion.

The MPDFT had obtained the injunction on the grounds that there was a lack of specific legislative authorization for the deal to be completed, since BRB is a public bank controlled by the Federal District. There was also a lack of a general shareholders' meeting before the acquisition was announced.

Judge Lopes understood that there was no "real urgency or risk of irreparable damage to justify the injunction granted by the appealed decision, the maintenance of which interferes with the strategic business operation unnecessarily, even before the technical analysis by the regulatory bodies".

According to him, since there is no purchase of control, there is no need for specific legislative authorization, but only approval from regulatory authorities. "Likewise, there is no concrete urgency, since the signing of the contract is not yet imminent, since the operation depends on prior approval from BACEN (Central Bank) and CADE (Administrative Council for Economic Defense) ."

For Lopes, there is still a risk that the ban will create distrust among "investors, clients and consumers in general, compromising the institutional image and market confidence, generating a negative impact on the entity's value".

Banco Master has been at the center of debate in the financial market since the operation with BRB was announced in March. For the deal to go through, a solution must be found to guarantee payment to investors who bought Master bonds in recent years, which will probably involve the Credit Guarantee Fund (FGC) . This year alone, R$12 billion is due.

Since it was transformed from Banco Máxima to Master in 2021, the bank has accelerated fundraising with aggressive return offers . The account jumped from R$4.4 billion in 2020 to more than R$40 billion.

Using these resources, the bank built a credit portfolio focused on risky and low-liquidity assets, such as court orders (securities linked to court rulings) and companies in difficulty.