Guidelines on Merger Remedies in Brazil

July 2018

Guidelines on Merger Remedies in Brazil – Paulo Burnier da Silveira¹ (CADE)

The Brazilian Competition Authority (CADE) has issued several guidelines in the past few years as an effort to promote competition enforcement in Brazil. The recent examples concern Compliance Programs, Leniency Agreements, Settlement Agreements, Gun jumping and a revised Merger Horizontal Guidelines.² The next step is a Guideline for Merger Remedies, which is currently in its draft version and it is open for consultations to both the national and global antitrust community. In this context, this short column will present the main aspects of two guidelines issued for merger control, namely the new merger horizontal guidelines and the draft merger remedies guidelines.

In April 2016, CADE published the Horizontal Merger Guidelines³ (or simply “Guideline H”). The new Guidelines replaces the first guidelines on this matter issued in 2001, which was developed by CADE in partnership with the former Secretariat of Economic Law of the Ministry Justice and the Secretariat for Economic Monitoring, of the Ministry of Finance. The New Merger Horizontal Guidelines are based on the new Brazilian Competition Law (in effect since May 2012), which introduced a pre-merger review system in Brazil. In addition, the document is in line with the best antitrust practices abroad. The guidelines refer exclusively to the transactions that involve the economic integration between competitors companies or potent