By Brazil Stock Guide – Brazil’s new securities regulator chief, Otto Lobo, is using the start of his term to send a clear message to investors and companies: the Comissão de Valores Mobiliários will be more technical, more transparent and better equipped to oversee an increasingly complex capital market.
In his first interview since being officially appointed president of the CVM, Lobo told Valor Econômico that his administration will be guided by public interest, stronger governance and a commitment to act when the market requires it. His most forceful line was also his simplest: “We will not neglect anything.”
The statement is designed to reassure a market that has grown faster than the regulatory machinery built to supervise it. Brazil now has a broader retail investor base, more sophisticated corporate structures, more complex products and a rising demand for transparency from both local and foreign investors.
Lobo’s pitch is that the CVM can meet that challenge by combining institutional discipline with technological modernization.
He enters the role with a résumé that gives him an unusual kind of political insulation. Lobo served in the financial system’s appeals council during the Dilma Rousseff administration, was appointed as a CVM director under former President Jair Bolsonaro, and has now been chosen by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to lead the regulator.
For Lobo, that cross-government trajectory reinforces the central argument of his appointment: he is a technical regulator, not a partisan one.
“In 2021, I was appointed by Minister Paulo Guedes, under President Jair Bolsonaro, so that already shows it was independent of party politics,” Lobo said. He added that Lula chose him because he was already known inside the CVM as an “extremely technical” director.
That background matters. The CVM’s next phase will require decisions that are likely to displease different constituencies at different times: controlling shareholders, minority investors, issuers, funds, fintechs and government officials. Lobo is presenting technical consistency as the anchor that can protect the agency from political noise.
His agenda is ambitious. He wants to transform the CVM into a “world-class regulator,” with stronger supervision, better enforcement tools and a more digital operating model. Artificial intelligence and tokenization are not side themes in that plan; they are central to how he believes the agency can supervise markets faster and more effectively.
A recent Supreme Court decision allowing the CVM to retain inspection-fee revenue could give the agency the financial resources needed to make that shift. Lobo described those funds as the fuel for a modernization drive that would give the regulator more capacity to monitor risks, identify irregularities and respond earlier.
Tokenization is one of his priorities. Lobo argues that blockchain-based infrastructure and smart contracts can make securities transactions more transparent, traceable and easier to supervise. In his view, that could improve the CVM’s ability to detect market manipulation and insider trading before problems become systemic.
“We are not reinventing the wheel,” he said. “This is happening all over the world.”
The message is important for Brazil’s market. A stronger CVM does not only mean more punishment after wrongdoing. It can also mean clearer rules, faster supervision and greater confidence for investors allocating capital to Brazilian companies.
Lobo also used the interview to defend one of the most scrutinized decisions associated with his recent tenure: the Ambipar case. The CVM decided that Ambipar was not required to conduct a tender offer. Lobo said the issue was technical and legal, not political.
At the center of the dispute was whether the regulator could impose a mandatory tender offer based on the concept of a related party. Lobo argued that doing so would have created an unprecedented and potentially destabilizing precedent for the market.
“The OPA itself can only be imposed against the controlling shareholder,” he said. He noted that in the CVM’s 49-year history, there had never been a mandatory tender offer based on a related-party concept.
That is the key point in Lobo’s defense: the CVM was not weakening investor protection, but preserving legal predictability. In a capital market, predictability is not a bureaucratic detail. It is part of the cost of capital. If rules can be stretched unpredictably from one case to another, companies, investors and advisers all face higher legal uncertainty.
Lobo said the CVM had received three legal opinions indicating that the agency could not impose the tender offer on that basis. He also noted that, almost 11 months later, no minority shareholder had approached the CVM to request the offer.
For his supporters, the case shows exactly why a technical regulator matters: the CVM must protect investors, but it must also avoid creating precedents that could unsettle the broader market.
Lobo also defended his use of the casting vote in the Ambipar decision. After a tie in the board and the resignation of the previous CVM president during the case, he said he had no institutional alternative but to break the deadlock.
“I could not fail to use the casting vote,” he said.
The point reinforces the image Lobo wants to project: a regulator who understands the mechanics of a collegial body and is willing to assume responsibility for difficult decisions.
On Banco Master, another sensitive topic, Lobo rejected the idea that the CVM had acted favorably toward the bank. He emphasized that directors and board members do not directly perform supervisory and inspection work. Those functions belong to the agency’s technical departments, while the board judges cases when they reach the collegiate level.
“Directors and members of the board do not supervise or inspect,” he said. “The technical areas are the ones that supervise.”
The distinction is more than procedural. It is part of the governance architecture of the regulator. By separating investigation from judgment, the CVM seeks to preserve due process and avoid politicizing enforcement decisions.
Lobo’s early internal changes also point to a regulator trying to sharpen its focus. Soon after taking office, he replaced seven CVM superintendents. He denied any political motivation and said the objective was efficiency, with priority given to core areas such as supervision and enforcement.
According to Lobo, the CVM needed to rebalance its structure after back-office functions had grown too much in previous years. His argument is that the agency must direct more energy and resources toward the activities that matter most to investors: monitoring, supervision and enforcement.
That reorganization, combined with new funding and technological investment, gives Lobo an opportunity to change the CVM’s operating capacity rather than merely its rhetoric.
Sustainability will also return to the agenda. Lobo said he intends to bring the issue of mandatory sustainability reporting back to the CVM board. The regulator also plans to create a new superintendence and work with the Finance Ministry and the government’s sustainability secretariat on a broader agenda linking sustainability and financial education.
For listed companies, that could mean a more structured and predictable debate around ESG disclosure. For investors, especially foreign institutions, it could help Brazil move closer to global standards on climate and sustainability reporting. “It is necessary to have a new resolution,” Lobo said.
The relationship with the Finance Ministry will be another important pillar. Lobo said dialogue with the ministry is already positive and that the CVM will comply with the Supreme Court decision on inspection-fee revenue while discussing how the funds should be used.