By Gabriel Araujo
SAO PAULO (Reuters) -Brazilian retailer Americanas SA reported 7,720 creditors and debt totaling nearly $8 billion within its restructuring process, a Rio de Janeiro court said on Wednesday.
Americanas, backed by the billionaire trio that founded 3G Capital, entered bankruptcy protection last week after disclosing “inconsistencies” in its accounting, leading top investors such as BlackRock and Capital International to scale back their positions in the firm.
Deutsche Bank topped the list of creditors initially revealed by Americanas, but the German lender later said it had no lending relationship or credit exposure to the Brazilian company.
The list provided on Wednesday included roughly 41.2 billion reais ($8.1 billion) in debt, according to the court, which initially did not disclose the names of the creditors.
Later, however, Americanas revealed the full list in a securities filing, ranging from small debts with individuals and cities to multibillion-reais debts with banks.
Deutsche Bank appeared with a $1 billion debt, but said in an emailed statement that it had no direct exposure to the Brazilian firm.
“Deutsche Bank is not affected as it neither has a lending relationship nor any credit exposure to the company in question,” it said.
Meanwhile, Brazilian banks BTG Pactual, Bradesco and Santander Brasil – which analysts previously said were among the most exposed – made the list with debts of more than 3.5 billion reais each.
At the same time, Americanas said in a separate filing that U.S. investment management company BlackRock Inc had sharply reduced its position in the firm following the accounting scandal.
Data published on Americanas’ website showed that in December 2022 BlackRock owned more than 45.5 million common shares in the firm, a stake of roughly 5.05%.
Now, the retailer said BlackRock had cut its position to 1,038,566 common shares, or about 0.12% of the total, plus some derivative instruments accounting for 0.36% of its total common shares.
($1 = 5.1170 reais)
(Reporting by Gabriel Araujo Editing by Louise Heavens and Mark Potter)