Brazil BNDES sells out stake in Vale for $2 billion

The Rio de Janeiro-based miner, the world’s top iron ore producer, currently has a market capitalization of almost $93 billion.

In the past months, BNDES has been turning its focus and resources energies towards Brazil’s social and environmental development.

The lender carried out in November a block trade operation at the Sao Paulo’s stock exchange. The 2.5 billion reais-transaction reduced BNDES’ stake in Vale to 2.4% of the miner’s voting shares.

In August, the bank had already raised 8.1 billion reais ($1.53 billion) by selling 135 million of the iron ore miner’s shares, also in a block trade operation. The deal axed the bank’s stake in the company to 3.7% from 6.3%.

BNDES has also tried to divest its stake in in state-run oil giant Petrobras, but those plans were put on the back burner after the company lost almost a fifth (71 billion reais or $13bn) of its market value on President Jair Bolsonaro’s move to appoint a new chief executive on Monday.

The President’s plan to appoint General Joaquim Silva e Luna, who served alongside Bolsonaro decades ago under Brazil’s military dictatorship, came as a blow to the oil producer.

Petrobras — officially Petróleo Brasileiro SA — had spent the past few years working to regain investors’ trust and selling billions of dollars of assets following an overspending binge under prior administrations that nearly drove the company bankrupt.