State Decree 64,879/20, published on March 21, recognized a situation of public emergency in the state of São Paulo, and mandated additional restrictive measures to tackle it. Among other measures, in-person service at the São Paulo State Board of Trade (Jucesp) was suspended.

Between March 23 and April 30, 2020, Jucesp will act only through its online platform, which, in general terms, offers the following services:

• electronic opening of companies
• searching and looking up companies, registration forms, and company names
• obtaining certain certificates and copies of scanned documents.

Opening of a company in electronic form is only available to individual entrepreneurs, Eirelis, and limited liability companies, and requires the adoption of the standard Jucesp articles of association/instrument of incorporation (which may be amended and adjusted to specific needs later).

Although it is not possible to obtain a physical filing during the in-person restriction period, in principle there is no prohibition on having the other forms necessary for filing corporate acts in general to be issued as normal. This prevents them from accumulating pending the physical reopening of Jucesp and allows them to be presented and physically recorded as soon as service is fully restored.

Jucesp also extended the deadline for fulfilling requirements without the need to pays new fees, after 30 days of notice.

As a general rule, corporate acts and documents produce effects between the parties when they are signed. They must be filed with the respective board of trade within 30 days of signature in order to ensure retroactivity of such effects also in relation to third parties. If this time limit is not observed, the filing shall be effective vis-à-vis third parties only after the order granting it. In any case, for urgent acts, corporate acts will be valid upon signing at least between the parties.

We summarize below the information provided thus far by some boards of trade from other states regarding their arrangement for operation as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. Some of them already offer more comprehensive digital services.