If you were frightened by the black cover and the tone of this edition’s headline, here is some consolation: the spirit of this edition of CAPITAL ABERTO is, in fact, as blue as the sky that decorated the cover of the January edition last year. On the subject of sector projections, on page 12, we run the risk of tiring the reader with so much expectation for growth of consumption, income, credit, investments and Brazil itself. Optimism is maintained, despite the restrictive measures announced by the federal government to control inflation. For investors in the stock market, the only lament is the fact that most of this happiness, of course, is already included in the price of shares.

Even in the real estate sector, whose impressive appreciation in recent years is starting to make more experienced investors wary, there are still some people who forecast several years of growth. The increase in income suggests that there is a demand that could potentially sustain supply and high prices.

The Finance Ministry’s package to stimulate long-term financing for companies, published in December, rounds off the scenario. For many years, it has been said that fund raising through debentures have not taken off due to the lack of an active secondary market. Now, the government has decided to free up a part of banks’ compulsory deposits to create funds to give liquidity to these bonds. The measure is music to the ears of market agents. So much so, it seems too good to be true.

The problems, for their part, are getting more sophisticated. The subject is no longer the importance of publically-traded companies talking to their shareholders, but rather the difficulty that modern structures assembled by banks with derivatives can add to this process. In the article on governance in this issue, instead of talking about the tendency of board members to professionalize their operations, we deal with a subject that is several steps above this one: the delicate definition of the limits of responsibility of board members.

It seems that the solutions and the difficulties of the capital market are becoming more complex and provocative. That’s great news for those who, like us, live by organizing and transmitting these reflections to whoever may be interested. We wish everybody a great start to the year.