Brazil: Caio de Andrade, nominee to take over Petrobras

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On May 23, the Brazilian federal government announced an invitation for the entrepreneur Caio Mario Paes de Andrade, special secretary for Debureaucratization, Management, and Digital Government of the Ministry of Economy, to assume the presidency of Petrobras.

Andrade is an entrepreneur in the information technology and real estate market and was previously quoted to be the oil company president. However, Mines and Energy Minister Bento Albuquerque chose Adriano Pires for having experience in the area.

He did his basic education at the Military School in Salvador, has a degree in Social Communication from Paulista University, and a post-graduate degree in Administration and Management from Harvard University. He also holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Duke University.

In 1999, Caio Mario was president of PSINet Brazil and general director for Latin America. He acquired and consolidated 15 access providers in the region, mainly STI in São Paulo.

In 2000, he founded WebForce, a company that acts as an incubator and accelerator of new enterprises.

WebForce developed and sold the hpG website hosting company at the beginning of its operation.

In 2004, CMPA (as Caio de Andrade is known by the initials of his name) went into the real estate market and acted as developer and founder of Maber, a real estate company in São Paulo that Lopes acquired in 2010.

In the social area, he founded and promoted the Fazer Acontecer Institute, which works in the sports area to encourage citizenship in the semi-arid region of Bahia. Caio Mario also participated as an entrepreneurship mentor for the Endeavor Brazil Institute.

After founding three Information Technology companies, he moved from private to public enterprise in 2019 to chair Serpro (Data Processing Service), the public company responsible for screening emergency aid registrations.

Andrade stayed at Serpro until August 2020, when he took over the Special Secretariat for Debureaucratization, Management, and Digital Government, where he was responsible for the GOV.BR platform.

On his LinkedIn, Andrade is also a member of the Board of Directors of Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Company). He is also a member of the board of PPSA (Pre-Salt Petroleum) since January 2021. The state-owned company is linked to the Ministry of Mines and Energy.

OAS

Caio Paes de Andrade has also worked for the contractor OAS Empreendimentos -now known as Metha- from mid-1994 to mid-1995 but does not disclose this information in his professional profiles.

OAS is a construction company with its origins in Bahia. It was the protagonist of several scandals, the most recent being the Lava Jato scandal.

CHANGE IN THE COMMAND OF PETROBRAS

The government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) has decided to change the president of Petrobras once again. In a note released by the Ministry of Mines and Energy on May 23, the invitation to Caio Mário Paes de Andrade was announced. He is the current special secretary to the Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes.

If he accepts the invitation, Andrade could be the fourth president of the state-owned company in Bolsonaro’s administration. José Mauro Coelho had been president of Petrobras since April 14th.

With information from Poder360