Chile: Regulator blocks Santander’s payments acquisition

Chile’s National Economic Prosecutor’s Office (FNE) reported on Thursday, July 26, that it banned Banco Santander from buying the Society of Collection and Payment of Services Limited (Servipag), a company that belongs in equal parts to the Bank of Chile and the Banco de Crédito e Inversiones, commercially known as Bci. The transaction, which was notified on October 26, 2017, contemplated the entry of Santander as a new partner in such a way that each bank would own one third of the Servipag property.

After an investigation, the FNE concluded that the entry of Santander into the Servipag property “would have substantially reduced competition in the digital collection and payment buttons markets, and determined that there are coordinated risks, which would not have been sufficiently compensated, nor for the efficiencies that the banks argued, nor for the mitigation measures they offered.”

Full Content: https://latinlawyer.com/article/1172281/chile-antitrust-regulator-blocks-santander-servipag-deal

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