Law No. 13,818/2019, published on April 25, amended articles 289 and 294 of Law No. 6,404/1976 (the Brazilian Corporations Law) and brought in important changes to the criteria previously required for the publication of corporate documents.

One of the changes introduced by Law No. 13,818, which entered into effect on April 25, is the waiver of publication of the company's management documents provided for in article 133 of the Brazilian Corporations Law, including the financial statements of closely-held companies with shareholders' equity of less than R$ 10 million and less than 20 shareholders. Since 2001, this measure was only waived for closely-held companies with shareholders' equity of less than R$ 1 million, an amount that has not been updated in almost 20 years.

Law No. 13,818 also provides for exemption, as of January 1, 2022, of the publications in the Official Gazette ordered by the Brazilian Corporations Law, such as call notices, minutes of meetings, financial statements, and so on. In this sense, the law determined that "publications must be made in a newspaper of wide circulation published in the locality in which the company's headquarters is located, in a summary form and with simultaneous disclosure of full copies of  documents on the same newspaper page on the Internet, which shall provide digital certification of the authenticity of the documents kept on a separate page issued by an accredited certification authority under the Brazilian Public Key Infrastructure (ICP-Brasil)."

In addition, Law No. 13,818 establishes the criteria allowed for publication of short-form financial statements.

Therefore, the innovations introduced give companies more flexibility and reduce the bureaucracy and maintenance costs of corporate governance, especially for smaller companies.