With President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil looking increasingly likely to face impeachment by early May, investors are turning their attention to the man who’d succeed her.
Michel Temer, the vice president, has plenty of traits that’d be welcomed in a country mired in a brutal recession. Those who know him best say he’s a business-friendly pragmatist who’s developed a knack over a multi-decade political career for forging agreements with fellow lawmakers. But then there’s this too: He runs the risk of getting forced out of office by charges related to the same impeachment case being brought against Rousseff. Temer’s PMDB party, the largest in the country, is widely expected to abandon the governing coalition at a meeting Tuesday.
In just over 30 years since its return to democracy, Brazil has looked to its vice president twice to pull itself out of crisis. Once it led to a debt default, the other time to the end of hyperinflation. Investors are wondering whether Temer will be more like Vice President Jose Sarney and his troubled economic plans of the 80s or Vice President Itamar Franco who laid the foundation for years of growth and stability in the 90s.
Brazil Energy Insight 
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