Milton Maluhy Filho: In fact, specifically talking about the cost of credit and the evolution for the year and the sector, the segment of wholesale, wholesale for the bank, it’s very broad. In the MD&A version and the way that we talk about this, it’s very important that we understand there’s several businesses here, not only the business of Itaú BBA, which are the big corporations in the middle, there is the whole business of asset management, which is in there. The operation of LatAm is also there, in there. So it’s a business that is very complete from the standpoint. So, it’s an overview that is a previous one with a wholesale, the retail vision. Well, no. In there, there are several businesses. Some more recently, and some more depending upon credits, some are outside of Brazil, which is the operation of LatAm which had a great evolution in 2022, with perspectives and challenges for 2023.
Of course. Now looking at the environment, of course, in a scenario that you’re looking at prospectively, a GDP that is relatively low, much below the potential for growth, we’re talking about GDP of 1% growth. We are talking about 0.9%. In the premise, I was talking with a bias of high €“ might be higher, but it’s not going to be substantially better. So we are reviewing this scenario and we are going to publish the next phase. First point. Second point, interest rate. Come on, interest rate, 13.75% plus the spread that is charged. It has an important pressure on any company, whether it’s a small company or a large corporation. Even though they’re very capable of accessing the capital markets, the base rate is much higher. That generates a pressure in the financial experiences.
And it makes the company to really take care of their leverage level. The activity in the month of January is much better than what we expected, we’ve seen, but November/December were weaker months. So maybe there is going to be compensation. Now with interest rates, 13.75%, there is a natural deacceleration of the company. But globally, the scenario improves from what we had two months, one month ago. We see global dropping the €“ dropping less than what we expected. And this is the whole framework. In our opinion, yes, this is a scenario that is more challenging for the company, specifically from thresholds that were very low. If you looked at the cost of credit, close to zero, in some cases, because there was still a portfolio in the past.
There were reversals that happened and companies performed better in several cases from what we expected, et cetera. So, we’re going to see an effect of normalization also that it’s going to happen in the wholesale. You mentioned a few cases, restructurings. Come on, these are not new, to be very frank. These were open. Once again, the fraud, the specific case, it’s not something that the traditional models would capture. The cases that we’ve heard, they’re not new, they were already on the radar, they were monitored and followed up. So there is a re-RJ happening. So you generate 45 days and you come back, the Chapter 11 because of the legal protection, the strategy, and the whole thing. And following up on the process and the case is absolutely duly provisioned.
We didn’t have any concerns specifically regarding for those that follow up close. So to answer. it’s a challenging scenario. Yes. I believe that there will be a normalization. Yes. The interest rate currently, it pressures the bad debt in the segment of the companies. And then, we have to follow up these liabilities up close. So there is no specific sector. What worries us is the leverage companies with high leverage with the cost of debt and they don’t have an adequate capital structure. But, remember, then there are many ways they can work with that. There is a capital markets today that there’s always an opportunity for opening a window and you can work on the capital of those companies. The shareholders themselves, they can inject the capital whenever there is difficulty.
