Few major economies have stumbled as abruptly as Brazil’s. For nearly a decade, it was a darling of international investors – the largest market in Latin America and 30 to 40 percent of a typical multinational company’s Latin America portfolio.

The ubiquitous BRICS acronym put Brazil on par with China, but in fact, Brazil’s prosperity depended in part on China’s appetite for commodities and on the Brazilian government’s ability to fuel consumer spending through direct transfers and credit expansion.

Brazil’s economic model was not sustainable. Growth began to slow in 2012, and by late 2015 the business environment became downright gloomy. Currently, the economy is in recession, the country just lost its hard-won Standard & Poor’s investment-grade status, the real has depreciated to 12-year lows and talk of presidential impeachment fills the public square.

For several years, foreign multinationals’ country managers have faced increasing pressure from their corporate headquarters to improve profitability after many years of strong top-line performance but disappointing returns on investment. Savvy companies implemented strategies for operational efficiency while they continued to meet – and often exceed – quite aggressive sales growth targets.

As 2015 draws to a close, companies in a number of industries are seeing stalling and even shrinking sales, in line with a recessionary overall economy. Given an expected average annual growth rate of 1.0 percent through 2020, multinationals will need to find new ways to deliver on the dual corporate mandate of top-line and bottom-line performance.

In Frontier Strategy Group’s latest white paper, “The New Economics of Winning in Brazil,” we have identified five strategies that leading multinational companies are already implementing in Brazil in order to outpace their competitors and improve profitability.

Download the White Paper:

The New Economics of Winning in Brazil