Sweet Home Floripa, Florianópolis, Brazil

Dr. Carlos Zoéga Coelho

In our most recent interview, Carlos Zoéga discussed the exciting, new service offered by his law practice. Carlos will now offer a full-service business consultancy that allows foreign investors the opportunity to perform thorough due-diligence investigations on Brazilian businesses. 

This new consultancy service, Carlos told me, “examines all the non-legal aspects of investing in a Brazilian company.  For example, we can now help foreign investors evaluate the financial records of the company.  We can also prepare the necessary reports to provide the investor with a clear understanding of the risks and returns their investments should command.”

Carlos is offering this consultancy service to his clients, whether they are interested in investing in Brazil–today one of the top two BRIC economies–or investors who seek an investor’s visa in Brazil through investment.

Carlos assists foreigners wishing to living permanently in Brazil to obtain a permanent resident status through an investor’s visa.  In our interviews on this subject, Questions about Brazil’s Investor Visa?  Ask Dr. Zoéga. and More Questions about Brazil’s Investor Visa?  Ask Dr. Zoéga. we learned that foreign nationals who invest R150,000 in a Brazilian business can obtain the right to live permanently in Brazil.  Those articles described how to go about setting up your own business from scratch.  But not all clients wanted to build up a business from the ground up.

In fact, several clients asked if Carlos wouldn’t be willing to try and connect them up with already-existing Brazilian businesses so that they could act as partners or investors.  Carlos explained that “in many cases, my clients tell me that they would prefer to become a partner of a business that is already running, that is already successful, that is already making profits, than to start from zero in a new country, in a completely different cultural and economic environment.”

Some of these clients have special areas of expertise that they can offer Brazilian businesses.  Others just want to make an investment and be silent partners.  Investing in a Brazilian business, however, can be almost as complicated for an uninformed foreign investor as starting a Brazilian business from scratch.  That’s why Carlos is now offering a specialized business consultancy in addition to his legal services.  Those who wish to invest in an already-existing business can make sure that the business is profitable, honest, and following Brazil tax and other guidelines.  The first step is “due diligence in researching the prospective company in order to understand exactly what the situation is regarding its debts, especially labor and tax debts.”

Through this consultancy, prospective investors can assess whether a Brazilian company is worth investing in, how much of a return they should receive on investments, and assess its track record.

Carlos added that he is now equipped to offer his consultancy service to both individuals and businesses as well.  In fact, his services are available to any investor, whether they want to live in Brazil or not.  In addition to assessing the value of partnerships with individual companies, Carlos can also help to set up holding companies that control partnerships in a variety of Brazilian companies in order to diversify investments among different industries or markets.

Once clients have decided that a partner business is a good investment, Carlos can also negotiate “the percentage of the shares that will be sold against the amount that will be invested, including the preparation of all legal documents involved.”  So, for those individuals and businesses who want to come to Brazil and invest in an already-existing and profitable business, Zoéga Coelho & Advogados now offers a way to do it in a way that is fully informed and with proper due diligence.

Dr. Carlos is Senior Partner at ZOÉGA COELHO & ADVOGADOS  Rua Adolfo Melo, n.38, sala 202 – Centro 88015-090 Florianópolis/SC – Brasil Telefone: (55 48) 3223-4729  Fax: (55 48) 3322-0483

SKYPE: carloszoegacoelho

If you are new to Floripa or to Brazil, you may be looking for a pleasant place to learn Portuguese. Located in the heart of Lagoa da Conceição, The Language Club is a well-established language school with over eighteen years in the business, with many, many happy students from all over the world. Not only does The Language Club (or TLC) offer excellent Portuguese language instruction, but the school also provides the documents necessary for obtaining a student visa.  And if you need it, TLC offers foreign visitors that extra tender loving care: they can find a place for you to stay and even help negotiate your rental contract in the process. Read the rest of this entry »

Many parents moving to a new country face a perplexing problem:  their children, who were doing well in their old school in their home country, now find themselves struggling with a new language, a new educational system, and new pedagogical methods.  Worst of all, many schools are premised on the idea that all students of a similar age must learn the same curriculum and advance at a certain pace.  Those who can’t keep up must stay behind and repeat the year.   Well, what of students who are only just learning the language for the first time?  How do they fit into this scheme?  Are such students, no matter how intelligent, doomed to frustration and poor self-esteem?   Read the rest of this entry »

Learning to speak a foreign language is often a question of trial and error, of bravely experimenting with new words and praying that the listener doesn’t look blank and shrug in confusion, or even worse burst out laughing. All too often a slight change in spelling, pronunciation or stress can radically change the meaning, making the language a minefield to be negotiated with the minimum of embarrassment.

Right from the start I knew I was in trouble; in my very first Portuguese lesson I was faced with the words ‘homem’ and ‘mulher’, so I confidently said to the teacher ‘eu sou um homem e você é uma mula’ (I’m a man and you’re a donkey). Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Huan Gomes

You stand ankle deep in the warm sea.  It’s sunset in late February.  The sky has turned from pink to purple.  Just as the sun is about to set behind you, you see it floating up from beyond the horizon:  the moon, full and ripe. You are dazzled, entranced, captivated by the beauty of Florianopolis. You vow never to leave.  You fantasize about buying that perfect piece of land, that dream house you knew you would find someday.

Perhaps it is this bedazzled vision, full of hope and wonder, that have led so many foreigners —and others—to fall prey to the real estate cons and land swindles that occur so frequently on the island.  So before you sign, take a look at the top five.  Read the rest of this entry »

“Go on, hit me!”  says Jairo, who is lying flat on his back, while I straddle his chest.  “Don’t be afraid!” I curl my hand into a fist and strike.  Before I can blink, however, I’m lying flat on my stomach and Jairo is smooshing my face into the mat with his forearm.  His iron fist pins my hand behind my back.  I try to move, but I cannot. “This is not a good position for you.  If I want to, I can finish you now.”  I can’t argue with that.  I’m grateful when Jairo allows me to stand up again.  His grins at me affectionately with his big, toothy grin.  It’s my first lesson in  Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and I’m not disappointed.

I had often wondered why Brazil should be home to its own national version of a Japanese martial art.  After all, Japan is on the other side of the world.  I understood why Capoeira, Brazilian fight dancing, had been invented by African slaves:  they had to conceal their martial arts from in the guise of dance so as not to alarm the slave owners.  But where did Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu come from?  And how had it become one of the most popular martial arts in the world?

As we sat on the mat during a break Jairo, a big man with cauliflower ears and a grey eyes, explained it all to me. 

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was invented by Helio Gracie, a skinny boy who lived in Rio de Janeiro.  “Helio,” Jairo explained, “was so weak that he could barely walk down the street without fainting.  His family had learned the secrets of Japanese Jiu-Jitsu from a Japanese nobleman, Count Coma, as a reward for helping a group of Japanese immigrants.  The Gracie family learned the Japanese secrets and then taught Jiu-Jitsu in Rio in a special gym, but Helio was forbidden from fighting.  He was too weak.  Too fragile.  Then one day a man came for a private lesson.  The regular teacher was late so Helio, who loved to watch his brothers practice, gave the man the lesson.  Afterwards Helio became a regular teacher at the academy.  Helio transformed Jiu-Jitsu so that it became applicable to street fighting.  It’s the most efficient way to neutralize a real attacker if you are really attacked.  It allows you to fight from the ground.  To fight from a vulnerable position.  To beat your attacker, even when he has an advantage over you.  You learn that you are not vulnerable.  How to turn a weak position into a strong position.”     

The Gracies, Jairo said, popularized their sport  in Los Angeles and caught the attention of Hollywood.  After that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu quickly became an international martial arts craze with Gracie centers all over the world.  Today Brazilian fighters regularly win mixed martial arts competitions on the world circuit. 

The break is over and we grappled again.  I try to throw Jairo.  “No, no,” he says.  “Relax.  Your body is too tense.   When you fight, you have to keep your body loose.  Keep your mind open and your body loose.  When your body is tight, you quickly tire yourself out.  When you are tense, you stop thinking.  This is how you defeat yourself.  When we fight, we must be like water.  Always flexible.  Always attentive.  Just like in life.”

Later he showed me how, if you can maintain your composure under attack, you can use the attacker’s strength against him. 

“In Jui-Jitsu, you can defeat anyone, no matter how much bigger and stronger they are than you.  You use their strength against them.  That’s because you fight up close.” 

Here, I could tell, his Jui-Jitsu lesson was once again about to veer out of the realm of martial arts and into the province of personal philosophy.  Smiling his big toothy grin again, he said, “People are afraid to clench, they are afraid to take on their problems close up. But in Jiu-Jitsu we learn to grapple with our enemies at close quarters.  The closer you are to your enemy, the more protected you are.”  

I straddled him  again and Jairo effortlessly rolled me over onto my back.  I tried to stop him, but I was helpless to resist the hold.

Later, as we sat in the café of the gym Jairo confided that he was a deeply spiritual man.  I asked him about how his belief in God had influenced his style of fighting.  “Helio Gracie,” he said, “was weak, small, and light.  He said he felt like a dead chicken.  That’s why he invented Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, so that he wouldn’t feel weak anymore.  When I started Jiu-Jitsu I was afraid, too. I felt like a dead chicken, too. But I didn’t give up.  I learned Jiu-Jitsu.  And then something happened.  Suddenly I wasn’t afraid anymore.  And you know what?” 

I sensed that our conversation was reaching some important insight. 

“When  you are no longer afraid, there is no more reason to lie. . . .  Once the question of physical fear is solved, then you can be open.  Then you can become a spiritual person.  Then you reach your spiritual nature.  When I am no longer afraid, then I have compassion.” 

He smiled his toothy grin one more time and I knew that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu had made another disciple.

Jairo Teixeira teaches Jiu-Jitsu at Academia Sotalia Sport on Avenida Pequeno Principe, 231 in Campeche. Tel:  55 (48) 3237-2775.