WB said, 'Jorge Paulo and his associates are extraordinary managers.'

Maybe not. Shades of WFC scandals:

<quote>

Like Gulbrandsen, he says he doubts that Lemann and his partners, Marcel Telles and Carlos Sicupira, knew about the accounting irregularities, but says that matters only to a degree. They created 'a system that leads to this behavior,' Prochno says.

It was early in the evening of Jan. 11 that Americanas issued a statement saying it had uncovered a 20 billion-real ($3.8 billion) liability that wasn't properly accounted for in its balance sheet.

</quote>

And too late became self-aware:

<quote>

Only in the wake of the rejection from Unilever has Lemann started to de-emphasize the cost-cutting, long the crux of the 3G model. Revenue growth'making and selling products people really wanted'was the new key. Lemann acknowledged last June that his executive training program had become 'outdated.'

'We trained people in cost-cutting, efficiency and logistics,' he said in a rare interview on CNN Brasil, 'and not in marketing, innovation and creating things in a digital world.' This revelation may have come too late to save Americanas. And much of the rest of Lemann's empire is in the doldrums.

</quote>

full article: bloomberg.com - Americanas crash casts harsh light on jorge lemann