Founded on 16 October 1890
Banco de Crédito Móvel
A financial institution founded in the first days of the Brazilian Republic which, after 117 years in extrajudicial liquidation, returned to legal life in 2018 to put in order a territorial and human legacy of historic proportions.
Who we are
The institution Brazil tried to forget — and that came back to settle accounts with history.
The Banco de Crédito Móvel was founded on 16 October 1890 under Decree No. 165, the first banking law of the Provisional Government of the Republic. It operated as a real-estate and agricultural bank, acquiring vast properties in Rio's West Zone that, decades later, would become the most valuable neighbourhoods in the city.
After the Encilhamento crisis (the 1890–91 speculative bubble), it entered voluntary (amicable) extrajudicial liquidation in 1901. That liquidation lasted, remarkably, 117 years — not through inefficiency, but because of a legal deadlock in several layers, culminating in Decree-Law No. 9,228/1946, which required a liquidator appointed by the Minister of Finance — an appointment that never took place.
In 2017, when the court-supervised liquidation ended, the rightful heirs of the shareholders took back control of the company and, in 2018, registered the first CNPJ (federal company tax number) in the institution's history: BCM — Ativos Imobiliários S.A.
The past is never entirely behind us. The paperwork of registry offices and commercial registries is the mortar of reality — when the rules of that code are ignored, legal uncertainty lingers like a ghost, ready to present the bill to future generations.
- 1890Year founded
- 117Years in extrajudicial liquidation
- 120Mm² of original land holdings
- 2018Reopened as BCM Ativos Imobiliários S.A.
Historical and legal timeline
134 years of documented existence
1890 — 1901
Founded under Rui Barbosa's decree, and the Encilhamento crisis
Founded on 16 October 1890 under Decree No. 165 — the Republic's first Banking Law —, the BCM was born at a moment of deep speculative euphoria. Under the expansionary policy of Finance Minister Rui Barbosa, banks and companies multiplied, financed by easy credit and inflated currency.
In that context, the BCM carried out the largest real-estate transaction of its time: it acquired the Fazenda Camorim, Fazenda Vargem Grande and Fazenda Vargem Pequena estates — which had belonged for almost 300 years to the Benedictine monks of the Mosteiro de São Bento —, totalling some 120 million square metres in Rio de Janeiro's West Zone.
The Encilhamento crisis that followed in 1891 devastated the national financial system. The BCM, however, kept its operations documented — as recorded in the Gazeta de Notícias and other newspapers — for a decade, before seeking the legal protection of voluntary liquidation.
Legal basis: Decree No. 165 of 17/01/1890 · Decree No. 703 of 10/10/1900 · Collection of the Biblioteca Nacional (National Library of Brazil)
1901 — 1964
The voluntary extrajudicial liquidation and the land-registry obstacles
At an Extraordinary General Meeting held on 16 February 1901, the BCM resolved to enter voluntary (amicable) extrajudicial liquidation under Decree No. 703/1900. The resolution was endorsed by the Commercial Registry and published in the Jornal do Comércio. The shares became legally non-transferable.
The process ran into structural obstacles that left it unresolvable for decades. In 1921, 1926 and 1937, the districts of the land registry offices were successively redrawn, moving registration authority over the BCM's lands to the 9th Land Registry Office. With the Land Subdivision Law, the bank could no longer obtain approval to subdivide its properties.
The turning point came with Decree-Law No. 9,228 of 3 May 1946. In 1901, the BCM's liquidators had been elected by the shareholders' meeting, as the law then allowed; from 1946 on, the liquidator of a financial institution was to be freely appointed and dismissed by the Minister of Finance. The BCM never received such an appointment. It went on operating in a vacuum of legitimate representation — de facto, but not de jure.
Legal basis: Decree No. 703/1900 · Decree-Law No. 9,228/1946 · Decree-Law No. 9,328/1946 · Law No. 1,808/1953
1964 — 1966
The deed of extinction: absolute nullity, not a mere formal defect
On 30 December 1964, nine people appeared at the 22nd Notary's Office (22º Ofício de Notas) of Rio de Janeiro and signed a deed declaring the liquidation, and the BCM itself as a legal entity, extinct. The signatories presented themselves as liquidators "eleitos em assembleia" [elected at a shareholders' meeting] — precisely the method the law had abolished in 1946. The deed was only filed on 11 March 1966, when Law No. 4,595/1964 was already in force, and nothing in the filing records the authority that by then already existed.
The deed is condemned by what it does not say. It does not say who appointed the liquidators — and Article 3 of Decree-Law No. 9,228/1946 required the Minister of Finance. It does not mention the SUMOC (Superintendency of Money and Credit), the body that had supervised banks since 1945 and whose role was to approve a liquidation's final accounts. It does not identify the instrument it claims to ratify. And, in the same act in which it declares the legal entity extinct, it grants two attorneys-in-fact powers to transfer, settle and sign deeds on the company's behalf.
Powers cannot be granted on behalf of an entity declared extinct in that same act: the deed itself presupposes that the assets, and the company that owned them, were still alive. Those who signed it had no power to decide on the bank's existence. The act is void ab initio (null and void as a matter of law) — it cannot be cured, nor validated by the passage of time (Brazilian Civil Code, Article 169).
Legal basis: Decree-Law No. 9,228/1946, Article 3 · Law No. 4,595/1964 · Civil Code, Articles 166 and 169 · 22nd Notary's Office, Book 482, folio 42 · Filed on 11/03/1966
See the Mattos & Mattos legal opinion
2005 — 2017
The 2005 request: no one asks to liquidate what is already extinct
In 2005, Pasquale Mauro — one of the two attorneys-in-fact named in the 1964 deed — asked the 6th Business Court of the TJRJ (Rio de Janeiro State Court of Justice) to appoint him liquidator of the BCM.
The request had a consequence that went beyond the person who made it: one can only ask for the liquidation of a company that exists. Forty-one years after the deed, the bank it declared extinct came back before the courts as a company in liquidation, still waiting for someone to complete it.
On 15 December 2005, the judge denied the request, for "não comprovação dos fatos alegados pelo requerente" [failure to prove the facts alleged by the applicant], and appointed the court's 2nd Central Office of Judicial Liquidators. On 13 June 2017, the judgment ended the case without a ruling on the merits: there was never a judgment dissolving the BCM.
Case: 6th Business Court of the TJRJ, No. 0052469-45.2005.8.19.0001 · Decision of 15/12/2005 · Dismissed without a ruling on the merits (13/06/2017)
2017 — 2026
Reopening, the CNPJ and the return as BCM Ativos Imobiliários S.A.
When the court-supervised liquidation ended in 2017, control of the company returned, by law, to the heirs of the original shareholders. In accordance with the Brazilian Corporations Act, an Extraordinary General Meeting was called, with published notices, a call to creditors and a formal resolution to close the extrajudicial liquidation.
In 2018 — exactly 128 years after its founding —, the bank's representatives obtained from the Federal Revenue Service the first CNPJ in the institution's history. The legal entity was reborn as BCM — Ativos Imobiliários S.A. In a historic vote at the JUCERJA (Rio de Janeiro State Commercial Registry), the re-registration was approved by 23 votes to none.
The legal battle went all the way up to the STJ (Superior Court of Justice), where Positive Conflict of Jurisdiction No. 215,515/RJ is pending before Justice Maria Isabel Gallotti. In 2024, the head office was moved to Brasília, coming under the Commercial Registry of the Federal District — seeking a technical ruling in the light of federal law.
Milestones: Regularization EGM (2017) · CNPJ No. 30.104.654/0001-26 (2018) · JUCERJA 23–0 · Conflict of Jurisdiction, STJ No. 215,515/RJ · Head office in Brasília (2024)
Legal grounds
Legal Opinion by Mattos & Mattos Advogados
The validity of the BCM's reopening, the absolute nullity of the 1964 deed and the continuity of the legal entity are grounded in a legal opinion drafted and signed by attorneys Heron Simões Mattos (OAB/RJ 188.310) and Cleci Isabel de Mello Mattos (OAB/RJ 144.717).
Official document Legal Opinion — BCM Ativos Imobiliários S.A. (in Portuguese)Corporate structure
Management
Chairman of the Board of Directors
Heitor Castro — in memoriam
Heir and representative of the original shareholders of the Castro family, the BCM's historical controlling shareholders since the Liquidation Committee took charge (1901).
Vice-Chairman of the Board
Osmar Rosa Mattos
Architect of the strategy to safeguard the company and of the BCM's social projects — REPHIS (Historical Reparation) and SIFH (Independent Housing Finance System).
Legal Director / Attorney
Heron Simões Mattos
OAB/RJ 188.310 · Mattos & Mattos Advogados · In charge of the legal strategy for the reopening and for the cases pending before the TJRJ, the TRF-2 and the STJ.
External Legal Team
To be announced
Reserved for outside attorneys and consultants to be appointed for the land-regularization and BACEN (Central Bank of Brazil) workstreams.