BRF: Abilio Diniz To Remain On Company's Board Until April 26

(RTTNews) - The chairman of BRF's board of directors, Abilio Diniz, denied that he would step down for the time being. According to a report by the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, there was an agreement with the shareholders of the pension funds of Petrobras and Banco do Brasil - Petros and Previ, respectively - for him to leave the position before the assembly in which replacements to the board should be elected on April 26.

In a statement, Diniz said he was holding talks on "the potential" election of the board on April 26. "However, until 5:30 pm today (April 5) there is no predictability about the eventual result of these negotiations, so it is premature to advance any information to the BRF and market," he said.

Pension funds were dissatisfied with the company's management and requested the exchange of all members of BRF's board of directors after the company reported a further loss of R$ 784 million in the fourth quarter of 2017, 77.4% higher than the loss recorded in the same period of the previous year. The market expectation was a profit of around R$ 187.52 million in the period.

After that, the pension funds called for a full board replacement. They appointed Augusto Marques da Cruz Filho as chairman of the board and Francisco Petros Oliveira Lima Papathanasiadis as vice president. The funds also appointed Walter Malieni Jr., Guilherme Afonso Ferreira, Jose Luiz Osirio, Roberto Antonio Mendes, Dan Ioschpe, Roberto Funari, Vasco Augusto Pinto da Fonseca Dias Junior and Luiz Fernando Furlan as members of the board. The current board has already approved the replacements.