Portfolio Managers
Given our size, it is very important to keep track of what is happening in all of our 35 malls. To make sure that we are paying attention to all of them the Operations team divided these 35 malls between 6 portfolio managers. The portfolio manager is the main communication link between our malls’ management and BRMALLS management. Their most important task is to guarantee that the malls are following their assigned strategy and to look for opportunities to increase mall revenue and efficiency. The portfolio managers’ goals are linked to the malls’ performance, aligning their interest with those of the Company.

General Performance Meetings
We organize monthly meetings to discuss all 35 malls’ performance and management. In these meetings, the portfolio managers discuss the monthly progress of the goals of the mall manager, operations manager, financial manager and marketing manager of each mall. Also, this meeting is used to discuss and define each mall’s store mix and leasing.

Quality Index
While we focused on improving efficiency and reducing operational costs in our shopping malls, we also maintained the quality of the services provided. Since June 2008, we have measured on a monthly basis the quality index of in our shopping malls (cleaning, security, parking, etc) through the external auditorship of Bureau Veritas. This index was created by our Operations team and measures 280 items on a monthly basis. Since we began to measure this, we increased the average index of quality from 60% in June of 2008 to 84% in 2009. In August 2009, we decided to increase our standard requirements to guarantee the best quality, which explains the fall in the index.

Facilities Management
Another important cost-saving measure was outsourcing our facilities management. We hired facilities companies for several malls, also lowering their services’ prices. The outsourcing has enabled mall management to focus on more strategic issues and problem solving.

Shared Purchases
In 2009, our Operations team launched a project to lower our tenant’s condominium. By consolidating the supply of demands for our managed malls. By increasing the purchase size we had bargaining power on prices. We negotiated prices for consumer materials, escalators, elevators and mobile phones. The shared purchases helped decreasing our condominium costs and consequently lowered our tenants’ occupancy cost to the lowest in the Brazilian mall sector, closing 2009 at only 9% of total sales.

Shared Services Center
In 2008, we created our Shared Services Center (CSC), responsible for all administrative, financial, accounting, IT and other services for our headquarters and our shopping malls. The CSC allows for economies of scale and operational efficiencies resulting from more standardized, flexible and reliable internal controls, systems and processes. This reliability is greatly due to the fact that the CSC operates throught the same robust ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) as Oracle. In the end of 2009, 18 of our 23 managed malls were already integrated with the CSC.