A indústria de fundos de investimento no Brasil : um estudo teórico e empírico sobre a relação fiduciária entre o administrador-gestor e os respectivos cotistas de fundos de investimentos

De acordo com dados de 07.10.2014 da Associação Brasileira das Entidades dos Mercados Financeiro e de Capitais – ANBIMA, no acumulado em 12 meses, entre aplicações, resgates e captações, a indústria de fundos movimentou mais de 11 bilhões de reais no Brasil. É um volume financeiro considerável, fazendo dos fundos de investimento importantes instrumentos de captação de poupança e de direcionamento de recursos para os mais diversos projetos de financiamento da economia. Além disso, as quebras de determinados conglomerados financeiros no Brasil nos últimos anos envolvendo fundos administrados e geridos por sociedades pertencentes a esses conglomerados colocou em evidência a importância de regras e estudos direcionados à relação entre o administrador-gestor e o cotista de fundos de investimento. De fato, pesquisa conduzida ao longo dos anos de 2013 e 2014 demonstrou que acadêmicos, reguladores e demais participantes do mercado de valores mobiliários possuem poucos estudos que possam assisti-los na solução de problemas relativos a essa relação, inclusive diante de situações envolvendo conflitos de interesses entre administradores-gestores e cotistas. Assim, diante da importância econômica dos fundos de investimento para o Brasil, da relevância dos direitos dos investidores dentro da indústria de fundos, e também em razão da escassez de estudos, este trabalho tem por finalidade realizar investigação teórica e empírica sobre a relação fiduciária entre o administrador, o gestor e os respectivos cotistas dos fundos de investimento. Dessa forma, o objetivo será identificar a origem, as características essenciais dessa relação, os riscos que ela pode trazer para o investidor e os deveres que ela impõe aos administradores e gestores. Para tanto, propõe-se avaliar a origem histórica da relação fiduciária e os fundamentos teóricos que a suportam aplicados aos fundos de investimento nos Estados Unidos e no Brasil. Com base nesse conhecimento teórico e sob o enfoque dos deveres fiduciários aplicáveis aos administradores e gestores, parte-se para a avaliação das normas de conduta contidas nas instruções da Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM), visando testar as características da relação fiduciária diante das regras da CVM. Por fim, realiza-se estudo sobre casos em que administradores e gestores foram condenados por quebra na relação fiduciária e por inobservância de deveres específicos embutidos nas normas de conduta avaliadas anteriormente. Com fundamento nos estudos teóricos e empíricos descritos, conclui-se que existem características essenciais na configuração de uma relação fiduciária entre o administrador-gestor e o cotista de fundos de investimento e que, uma vez formada essa relação, administradores e gestores obrigam-se a observar o cumprimento de deveres de diligência e de lealdade perante o cotista. Igualmente, ainda é possível afirmar que as normas da CVM de fato instituem a relação fiduciária entre o administrador-gestor e o cotista de fundos de investimento, bem como os deveres fiduciários conexos a essa relação.

WTO-plus commitments on the elimination of export duties: evidence of a two-tier membership?

This descriptive paper examines the prevalence of ‘WTO-plus’ commitments in accession protocols of newly acceded Members, with a focus on commitments on the elimination of export duties. It presents preliminary results of a mapping exercise carried out with respect to these commitments and seeks to answer two questions. First, can any general conclusions be drawn as to the prevalence of these commitments or are they, per definition, country-specific. Second, has the political nature of the WTO accession process allowed for the creation of a two-tier membership. The first question is answered by relying on data gathered as part of the ongoing PhD-research project conducted by the author. The project aims to construct a typology of WTO-plus commitments to allow for a more detailed analysis of the relationship between these commitments and the baseline obligations in the covered agreements. The accession of China to the WTO is commonly considered as the prime example of the inclusion of WTO-plus obligations in accession protocols. The paper tries to answer the question whether this particular accession was truly unique in nature, or whether the inclusion of “Plus” obligations is less exceptional than often assumed. Additionally, the accession protocols of other recently acceded-Members are examined to establish whether the hypothesis holds. In the PhD-research project this comparative methodology will also be applied to map WTO-plus commitments in other areas, such as anti-dumping and transparency. The second question will be answered in two stages. In a preliminary stage, international institutional law will be used to by analyzing the way in which the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body has dealt with this type of WTO-plus commitment in its jurisprudence. The second stage deals with the question of hierarchy: Accession Protocols are negotiated with the WTO Membership, by each country willing to accede to the WTO. This poses questions as to their exact position in the system of WTO law. To establish whether evidence of a two-tier membership is present, one first has to turn back to the question whether Accession Protocols are a separate (or independent) legal instrument or an “integral part” of the WTO system of covered agreements. If newly acceded Members do not benefit from the general exceptions in order to balance their more stringent, WTO-plus, obligations, this may support the conclusion that the membership of the World Trade Organization is becoming, in fact, two-tiered.

The consumer litigation industry: chasing dragon kings in lawyer-client networks

The community of lawyers and their clients form a scale-free bipartite network that develops naturally as the outcome of the recommendation process through which lawyers form their client base. This process is an example of preferential attachment where lawyers with more clients are more likely to be recommended to new clients. Consumer litigation is an important market for lawyers. In large consumer societies, there always a signi cant amount of consumption disputes that escalate to court. In this paper we analyze a dataset of thousands of lawsuits, reconstructing the lawyer-client network embedded in the data. Analyzing the degree distribution of this network we noticed that it follows that of a scale-free network built by preferential attachment, but for a few lawyers with much larger client base than could be expected by preferential attachment. Incidentally, most of these also gured on a list put together by the judiciary of Lawyers which openly advertised the bene ts of consumer litigation. According to the code of ethics of their profession, lawyers should not stimulate clients into litigation, but it is not strictly illegal. From a network formation point of view, this stimulation can be seen as a separate growth mechanism than preferential attachment alone. In this paper we nd that this composite growth can be detected by a simple statistical test, as simulations show that lawyers which use both mechanisms quickly become the \Dragon-Kings" of the distribution of the number of clients per lawyer.