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Doing business in Brazil Rio or São Paulo? For the first time in decades, Brazil’s Marvellous City looks attractive for business Sep 3rd 2011 | RIO DE JANEIRO AND SÃO PAULO | from the print edition LAST year Paulo Rezende, a Brazilian private-equity investor, and two partners decided to set up a fund investing in suppliers to oil and gas companies. Although this industry is centred on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second-largest city, with its huge offshore oilfields—and fabulous beaches, dramatic scenery and outdoor lifestyle—they instead established the Brasil Oil and Gas Fund 430km (270 miles) away, in São Paulo’s concrete sprawl. Even though it means flying to Rio once or twice a week, Mr Rezende, like many other businesspeople, decided that São Paulo’s economic heft outweighed Rio’s charms. But the choice is harder than it used to be. For many years, São Paulo has been the place for multinationals to open a Brazil office. It may be less glamorous than Rio, as the two cities’ nicknames suggest: Rio is Cidade Maravilhosa(the Marvellous City); São Paulo is Cidade da Garoa (the City of Drizzle). But as Mr Rezende sadly concluded: “São Paulo is the financial centre, and that’s where the money is.” Edilson Camara of Egon Zehnder International, an executive-search firm, does 12 searches in São Paulo for each one in Rio. The biggest mistake, he reckons, is for firms to let future expatriates visit Rio at all. “They are seduced by the scenery and lifestyle, and it’s a move they can sell to their families. But many have ended up moving their office to São Paulo a couple of years later, with all the upheaval that entails.” From a hamlet founded by Jesuit missionaries in 1554, São Paulo grew on coffee in the 19th century, industry in the first half of the 20th—and then on the misfortunes of Rio, once Brazil’s capital and its richest, biggest city. The federal government abandoned Rio for the newly built Brasília in 1960, starting a half-century of decline. Misgoverned by politicians and fought over by drug gangs and corrupt police, Rio became dangerous, even by Brazilian standards. The exodus gained pace as businesses and the rich fled, mostly for São Paulo. Now, though, there are signs that the cost-benefit calculation is shifting. São Paulo’s economy has done well in Brazil’s recent boom years and it is still much bigger, but Rio’s is growing faster, boosted by oil discoveries and winning its bid to host the 2016 Olympics (see table). Last year Rio received $7.3 billion in foreign direct investment—seven times more than the year before, and more than twice as much as São Paulo. Prime office rents in Rio are now higher than anywhere else in the Americas, north or south, according to Cushman and Wakefield, a property consultancy. Community-policing projects are taming its infamous favelas, or shantytowns: its murder rate, though still very high at 26 per 100,000 people per year (2.5 times São Paulo’s), is at last falling. Brazil’s soaring real is pricing expats paid in foreign currencies out of São Paulo’s classy restaurants and shopping malls; Rio’s recipe of sun, sea and samba is still free. Even Hollywood seems to be on Rio’s side: an eponymous animation, with its lush depictions of rainforest and carnival, is one of the year’s highest-grossing films. Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, has big plans for capitalising on the city’s magic moment. He has set up a business-development agency, Rio Negócios, to market the city, help businesspeople find investment opportunities, and advise on paperwork and tax breaks. It concentrates on sectors where it reckons Rio has an edge: tourism, energy, infrastructure and creative industries such as fashion and film. “A couple of years ago, foreign businessmen would come to Rio and ask what we had to offer,” says Mr Paes. “We had no answer. Now we roll out the red carpet.” The political balance between the two cities has changed too. In the 1990s São Paulo was more influential and better run: it is the stronghold of the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), the national party of government from 1995 to 2002. Now the PSDB is in its third term of opposition in Brasília, and though it still governs São Paulo state, it is weakened by internal feuds. In Rio, by contrast, the political stars are aligned. The state governor, Sérgio Cabral, campaigned tirelessly for the current president, Dilma Rousseff—and received his reward when police actions in an unruly favela late last year were backed up by federal forces. São Paulo’s socioeconomic segregation, long part of its appeal to expats, is starting to look like less of an advantage. Most of its nicer bits are clustered together, allowing rich paulistanos to ignore the vast favelas on the periphery. In Rio, selective blindness is harder with favelasperched on hilltops overlooking all the best neighbourhoods. But proximity seems to be teaching well-off cariocas that abandonment is no solution for poverty and violence. Community policing and urban-renewal schemes are bringing safety and public services. Chapéu Mangueira and Babilônia, twin favelas a 20-minute uphill scramble from Copacabana beach, are being rebuilt, with a clinic, nursery and a 24-hour police presence. The price of nearby apartments has soared. Other slums are also getting similar make-overs. Rio’s Olympic preparations include extending its metro and building lots of dedicated bus lanes, including one linking the international airport to the city centre. By 2016, predicts City Hall, half of all journeys in the city will be by high-quality public transport, up from 16% today. São Paulo’s metro extensions are years behind schedule, and the city is grinding towards gridlock. Its plans to link the city centre to its main international airport (recently voted Latin America’s most-hated by business travellers) rely on a grandiose federal high-speed train project, bidding for which was recently postponed for the third time. Rio is still unpredictably dangerous, and decades of poor infrastructure maintenance have left their mark. Its mobile-phone and electricity networks are outage-prone; the língua negra(“black tongue”, a sudden overflow of water and sewage) is a staple of the rainy season; exploding manholes, caused by subterranean gas leaks, are a hazard all year round. All in all, still not an easy choice for a multinational—but it is no longer foolish to let prospective expats fly down to Rio to take a look. http://www.economist.com/node/21528267

For whatever reason I ended up in Brasil via Google Earth Check out the ring road of Feira de Santana: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=feira+de+santana+BR&sll=-12.255805,-38.943357&sspn=0.064416,0.132093&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Feira+de+Santana+-+Bahia,+Brazil&ll=-12.260251,-38.958721&spn=0.064415,0.132093&t=h&z=14 It carries part of BR-116 a major Brazilian highway... it is literally a perfect circle Also note the extremely weird half-cloverleaf + U-turn interchange where BR-116 leaves the ring.

Un avion disparaît Radio-Canada Mise à jour le lundi 1 juin 2009 à 9 h 33 Photo: AFP/Jack Guez - Un Airbus A330 appartenant à Air France, à l'aéroport de Roissy, près de Paris, le 20 juillet 2006. Un Airbus transportant 228 personnes, assurant la liaison entre Rio de Janeiro et Paris, a disparu des écrans radars au large des côtes brésiliennes trois heures et demie après son décollage, vers 22 h 30, heure locale. « Air France a le regret d'annoncer être sans nouvelles du vol AF 447 effectuant la liaison Rio-Paris avec 216 passagers à bord et partage l'émotion et l'inquiétude des familles concernées », a déclaré une porte-parole de la compagnie aérienne française. Foudroyé L'appareil a traversé une zone orageuse avec fortes turbulences à 2 h GMT. Un message automatique signalant une panne de circuit électrique a ensuite été reçu à 2 h 14 GMT, a indiqué Air France. « Le plus vraisemblable est que l'avion a été foudroyé », a déclaré à la presse François Brousse, directeur de la communication d'Air France. « L'avion est entré dans un zone orageuse avec de fortes perturbations qui a provoqué des dysfonctionnements. » Une mission de recherche est en cours aux abords de l'archipel brésilien de Fernando de Noronha, a indiqué l'armée de l'Air brésilienne. Cette dernière précise que l'Airbus a disparu à environ 300 km au nord-est de la ville de Natal. L'hypothèse la plus tragique « sérieusement envisagée » « L'avion n'est certainement plus en vol à l'heure actuelle », a déclaré Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, directeur général d'Air France, lors d'une conférence de presse au siège de la compagnie, à Roissy. « À l'heure où je parle, il n'a plus de réserve de pétrole », a-t-il ajouté. Un peu plus tôt, le ministre Borloo avait déclaré au réseau France Info que « malheureusement, c'est affreux, mais l'hypothèse la plus tragique doit être sérieusement envisagée ». http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/International/2009/06/01/001-AVION-ALERTE.shtml (1/6/2009 9H47) French plane lost over Atlantic BBC Page last updated at 13:35 GMT, Monday, 1 June 2009 14:35 UK An Air France plane carrying 228 people from Brazil to France has vanished over the Atlantic after a possible lightning strike, airline officials say. The Airbus sent an automatic message at 0214 GMT, four hours after leaving Rio de Janeiro, reporting a short circuit as it flew through strong turbulence. It was well over the ocean when it was lost, making Brazilian and French search planes' task more difficult. Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris has set up a crisis centre. "The plane might have been struck by lightning - it's a possibility," Francois Brousse, head of communications at Air France, told reporters in Paris. France's minister responsible for transportation, Jean-Louis Borloo, ruled out hijacking as a cause of the plane's loss. Flight AF 447 left Rio at 1900 local time (2200 GMT) on Sunday. It had 216 passengers and 12 crew on board, including three pilots. The passengers included one infant, seven children, 82 women and 126 men. Details of the passengers' nationalities were not being released immediately but it is believed that a number of Italians and Britons are among the French people and Brazilians aboard. Long search The Airbus 330-200 had been expected to arrive in Paris at 1110 local time (0910 GMT). It is reported to have disappeared 300km (186 miles) north-east of the Brazilian city of Natal. Brazilian air force spokesman Col Henry Munhoz told Brazilian TV it had not been picked up by radar on the Cape Verde Islands on its way across the Atlantic, and confirmed that Brazilian air force planes had left Fernando de Noronha to search for the missing airliner. A French military plane also flew out of Senegal to take part in the search. Mr Borloo said the airliner would already have run out of fuel. "Nothing on Spanish radar, nothing on Moroccan radar, nothing on French radar - we seriously have to fear the worst," he added. Douglas Ferreira Machado, head of investigation and accident prevention for Brazil's Civil Aeronautics Agency, said the search would take "a long time". "It could be a long, sad story," he told Brazil's Globo news. "The black box will be at the bottom of the sea." An Air France spokeswoman said there had been no radio contact with the plane "for a while". TIMELINE Air France Airbus A330-200 believed to be the missing plane - archive image from AirTeam Images Flight AF 447 left Rio at 1900 local time (2200 GMT) on Sunday Airbus A330-200 carrying 216 passengers and at least 12 crew Contact lost 0130 GMT Missed scheduled landing at 1110 local time (0910 GMT) in Paris Crisis centre An Air France official told AFP that people awaiting the flight would be received in a special area at Charles de Gaulle airport's second terminal. Relatives and friends of the passengers have been ushered away from the main arrivals hall, the BBC's Alistair Sandford reports from Paris. "I want to say that everyone at Air France is deeply moved and shares the grief of the relatives of the passengers, and we will do everything possible to help them," said the chief executive of Air France, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon. French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed deep concern and called on the relevant authorities to do everything they could to find the plane, his office said. Air France has opened a telephone hotline for friends and relatives of people on the plane - 00 33 157021055 for callers outside France and 0800 800812 for inside France. This is the first major incident in Brazilian air space since a Tam flight crashed in Sao Paulo in July 2007 killing 199 people. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8076848.stm (1/6/2009 9H54)