Dear Team Member,

After firmly and calmly leading Odebrecht S.A. during the two most sensitive years of its history, Newton de Souza will be handing over, effective today, the office of Chief Executive Officer to Luciano Nitrini Guidolin, the Leader of a new generation at our business group.

The new CEO of Odebrecht S.A. is a 44-year-old São Paulo native with a B.S. in Production Engineering from the Polytechnic School at the University of São Paulo (USP) and an MBA from Harvard University.

Luciano Guidolin began his career at Odebrecht as an intern at the companies that eventually would become Braskem. For 12 years, he worked in various departments at the petrochemical producer (Sales, Planning, Marketing, Technology and Exports) before rising to the position of executive officer.

He worked for three years to help build and expand ETH, today Odebrecht Agroindustrial, before becoming its Chief Financial and Planning Officer. He also served as Chief Financial Officer of the holding company Odebrecht S.A. before returning to Braskem, where he served for five years as Executive Vice-President of the Polymers Unit in Brazil & Europe and of Technology & Innovation.

Since early this year, he has worked alongside Newton de Souza as Chief Investment Officer at Odebrecht S.A., during which time he expanded his vision of the group to encompass all businesses.

Newton de Souza will now serve as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of Odebrecht S.A. We are taking this important step to renew our teams, ensure the sustainability of the business and stay on the path of Survival, Growth and Perpetuity.

We are very grateful to Newton for having played a decisive role since the circumstances triggered by Operation Car Wash led him to assume, in 2015, the helm of Odebrecht S.A. Supported by the discipline and rigor of his background as a lawyer, Newton successfully headed the start of a transformation process that surely will bring important results in the coming years, both quantitatively and qualitatively.

During this period, the company signed a Leniency Agreement with the Federal Prosecution Office (MPF) in Brazil and with authorities in the United States, Switzerland and the Dominican Republic, and launched negotiations, which are well advanced, for similar agreements with other countries. The period will forever be marked on the history of Odebrecht as the creation of a new and more independent governance model for the group’s companies.

Each Business, as we call our nine operational areas, now has its own Board of Directors. The goal is for each Board to be formed by a minimum of 20% independent directors. In 2015, there were six independent directors. Today here are 13. We expect to reach 24 independent directors within a few months. Independent directors have no formal employment or commercial relationships with the companies. They foster diversity and strengthen transparency and the capacity for independent decision-making.

Also during this period, we expanded our Compliance Policy to incorporate the direct duties to be undertaken by the Board of Directors and by the Leaders of the Holding Company and its Businesses. The policy, now more in-depth and comprehensive, has clear rules governing our companies’ relations with government officials, suppliers and clients to ensure that our business activities always are guided by ethics, integrity and transparency.

Since then, all companies in the group have made efforts and engaged to continually improve the Compliance System. We already have nine Chief Compliance Officers, one at the Holding company and one at each business, who report directly to their respective Boards of Directors. By the end of the year, the Compliance teams will have a total of 60 professionals, who will be responsible for creating and enhancing processes and controls, for educational and training programs and for investigating any reports of wrongdoings.

The new governance model, the Compliance System and the commitment not to permit corruption in any of its forms are the foundations of the Odebrecht that we are building with the support of all our Team Members.

Newton began a corporate restructuring that included the divestment of companies and a firm determination to ensure the liquidity of the Businesses. Its conclusion, on April 25, with the divestment of Odebrecht Ambiental and an agreement reached with Brazil’s largest banks, along with other ongoing efforts, will enable new investments in our Businesses and provide a cash cushion for the next two years. The continuation of this work, along with the mission to resume our growth path, is one of the first challenges of Luciano Guidolin, who already was participating actively in the efforts to take Odebrecht to this new tangible and intangible level.

Luciano Guidolin, along with his entire team, have the experience and talent to lead Odebrecht and complete this journey to consolidate it as a financially healthy business group with excellent growth prospects and a reputation for acting with ethics, integrity and transparency.

That is how we want to regain society’s trust. That is our Commitment to the Future.

Emilio Odebrecht
Chairman of the Board
Odebrecht S.A.