A property in the neighborhood of Botafogo, in Rio de Janeiro, owned by Furnas Centrais Elétricas (Eletrobras Furnas), was auctioned today (13) at B3, the stock exchange, in São Paulo. With an area of over 9,000 m², the site is part of the former Furnas headquarters building and was acquired by developer Cyrela for R$ 75,400,014. There was no competition, no premium. 
The purchased lot comprises the parking lot and the buildings that housed the Furnas System Operation Center, printing shop and training center. During the session, a shed on Rua Real Grandeza was also available for purchase, with an area of 1,500 m² and a minimum sale price of R$ 10.2 million, but there were no interested parties.
This was the first auction of real estate assets held at B3 and was based on the highest bid price. “We had identified a serious problem in the company, with enormous geographic dispersion. Furnas is in 15 states and the Federal District with several idle properties, carrying a wallet. We had a problem to somehow make this demobilization viable”, said Pedro Brito, director of Corporate Management at Furnas.
cost center
According to him, the idea was to transform a “cost center that carried a lot of the company, and still does, into a revenue center to free up resources for what is the company’s main focus in the area of generation, transmission, commercialization and now innovation and sustainability”.
Bruno Laskowsky, director of Equity, Capital Markets and Indirect Credit at the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), defended this type of sale.
“There is an important space for recycling capital from the country’s real estate assets, because Brazil has a capital constraint, a budget constraint, we have a very large real estate asset”, he explained.
“We want to allocate to areas that generate development for the country, infrastructure, MSMEs [micro, pequenas e médias empresas] and encourage private credit, especially at times when the economy is more constrained,” added Laskowsky about the bank’s investment portfolio.
