Third mine disaster in a decade tests ESG boundaries in Brazil
Investors were swift to dump debt of Braskem after the Brazilian petrochemicals maker’s salt mine partially collapsed in December — a situation that has forced tens of thousands to evacuate the city of Maceio since 2019.
The selloff lasted less than a month before the prices recovered.
It was a rebound reminiscent of what happened in the wake of Samarco’s tailings dam collapse in 2015 and the rupture of a Vale dam in Brumadinho that killed 270 people in 2019: Any punishment levied by the debt markets was short lived.