

Marta Viegas: Focusing on Corporate Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean with IDB Invest.
Aug 3, 2020
01:01:51
- Start of interview. [1:40]
- Marta's "origin story" from Brazil to Washington DC [2:21]
- Her involvement with corporate governance education in Brazil with IBGC [6:31]
- The impact of Lava Jato (operation car wash) in Brazilian corporate governance (2014) [8:33]
- Her role coordinating the "comply or explain" Brazilian Corporate Governance Code [11:07]
- What made her transition from Tozzini Freire to IDB Invest in 2017? [16:31]
- What is IDB Invest? [19:13]
- Description of the Corporate Governance Development Framework adopted by 34 development finance institutions (DFIs) that manage ~$850B [23:13]
- IDB Invest's corporate governance framework: "The art is always trying to separate the essential from the desirable, the must-have from the nice-to-have." [25:45]
- How to coordinate the investment focus from the governance focus (time-management) [28:47]
- The state of corporate governance and some common issues in Latin America: lack of diversity, smaller capital markets, predominance of controlling shareholders, SOEs, and reliance on bank financing [33:24]
- The challenges for foreign investors in Latin American listed companies: protection of minority shareholder rights, transparency and related-party transactions [39:41]
- Controlling shareholders in Latin America have an incentive to improve corporate governance to attract investment in order to compete in a globalized market: "those are the winners in the market." [44:24]
- IDB Invest has a special focus on small countries and islands ("S&I countries") [47:12]
- The impact of Covid-19 in Latin America and IDB Invest's role in helping the region [49:39]
- IDB Invest article and guidance for the role of the Board during Covid-19 [51:43]
- Her favorite books: [55:54]
- The Trusted Advisor (Meister, Green & Galford)
- Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky)
- Her mentors: [58:01]
- Marcio Mello Silva Baptista (TozziniFreire)
- Maria Elisa Gualandi Verri (TozziniFreire)
- Luis Valdes (Principal - Brasilprev)
- Sandra Guerra (Better Governance)
- Rachel Robboy (IDB Invest)
- Her favorite quotes: "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." Martin Luther King Jr. [1:00:01]
Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
You can follow Evan on social media at:
X: @evanepstein
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/
Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/
__
To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/
__
Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License