Ricardo Eletro's recovery plan became a court-decreed bankruptcy with R$4.6bn in debts

On June 9, 2022, Valor reported that a São Paulo court had decreed the bankruptcy of Ricardo Eletro, the retail chain founded in 1989 by Ricardo Nunes, two years after the company filed for judicial recovery. The ruling by judge Leonardo Fernandes dos Santos covered companies across the controlling group, Maquina de Vendas, and cited the group's 'asset emptying' leading to financial inviability. Total indebtedness, including liabilities in recovery, stood at about R$4.6 billion at the end of 2021.

The group called itself surprised and appealed, arguing the 'emptying' was an accounting adjustment from writing down inventory after store closures and that store-closure stock had been burned off for cash — not 'fraud or diversion of values'. It had closed its remaining roughly 300 stores in the second half of 2020 and operated only online, with a small catalogue that no longer included major appliances or computing. Its recovery plan, approved on September 16, 2021, had been suspended by court injunctions; no creditor had petitioned for the bankruptcy.

The decline was long: Maquina de Vendas was assembled from the Insinuante, Salfer, City Lar and EletroShopping chains in an acquisition model that kept partners in separate regional operations, then lost almost all of them to disputes. Losses followed every year after 2014; revenue fell about 40 percent between 2015 and 2017 — from nearly R$10 billion in sales, 1,200 stores and 25,000 employees at the 2014 peak to R$6 billion, 650 stores and 13,000 employees in 2017 — and debt reached R$2.5 billion by 2018.

Bankruptcy decreed across the Maquina de Vendas group companies; total debt including recovery-phase liabilities of about R$4.6 billion at the end of 2021.

The group was built by acquisitions that never produced synergies, while partners exited and destabilised the operating teams.

Renegotiating debts and stretching supplier payments from 2015 onward signalled a balance sheet that growth no longer covered.

The 2016 and 2020 economic crises crushed the consumption the leverage depended on.

Closing all physical stores in 2020 while selling off inventory for cash left the judge weighing whether value had been stripped from creditors.

Acquisition-led growth without integration buys scale but not synergy: when the debt arrives, the pieces separate faster than they ever combined.

The group filed an appeal the same day with São Paulo's 2nd Chamber of Business Law seeking to reverse the bankruptcy and resume operations under the suspended recovery plan; the company was chaired by Pedro Biachi, a former executive of restructuring firm Starboard, with MV Participações 90.3 percent held by an investment fund.