The impact of corruption on the performance of state-owned companies: case of Petrobras Brasil
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2016-04-14
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Pacheco, Julia Alice Sophia von Maltzan
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State-owned companies are often considered as crucial components of a country’s economy. They are responsible for the creation of numerous jobs and are often providing essential services that require heavy capital investment. However, in countries with weak institutions where the accountability of politicians is poor and the management of SOEs’ financial resources undergo little control, officials are often inclined towards corruption. Huge amounts of public funds are easily diverted, and money which should have been invested in capital expenditure, in paying back company debt or in increasing shareholder return, are used to increase private patrimony or illegally fund political parties. Company performance suffers from such divestments as parts of the company’s profits are not reinvested in the company and as managers’ incentives are unaligned with shareholder interests. Petrobras, Latin America’s biggest company in terms of assets and annual revenues, suffered in 2014 and 2015 from an immense corruption scandal the economic impact of which is considerable, as investor confidence in Brazil weakened following the event. The scandal exposed an extensive corruption scheme through which contractors were colluding to increase prices of construction contracts, with the approval of Petrobras’ management who required in return either personal gains or funds for the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT). The exposure of the scandal in the Brazilian press has had a great impact on Petrobras’ credibility as a firm: the company’s accounts were hiding immense irregularities as it had been paying too much for construction contracts which weren’t priced at market value. Throughout this paper, we will use the example of Petrobras to illustrate how corruption within State-Owned companies undermines company’s performance and how it impacts the company’s various stakeholders.