Review №6 of Brazilian Antitrust News from the Experts of the BRICS Competition Centre
- CADE has closed the public consultation on the Guide on Cooperation Between Competitors
- An international automotive cartel in the electronic auto components market has been convicted
- CADE has approved the transfer of control over Brava Energia to Colombia’s Ecopetrol
- The Tribunal has reopened an investigation into the food delivery market
- The B3 exchange is under suspicion of alleged abuse of dominant position
- New proposals advance the reform of digital platform regulation
- The Microsoft – Inflection AI case has exposed a new approach to reviewing AI deals
- CADE continues its crackdown on cartels in public infrastructure procurement
CADE has closed the public consultation on the Guide on Cooperation Between Competitors
CADE has closed the submission period for public comments on the draft Guide on Cooperation Between Competitors (Guia de Colaboração entre Concorrentes). The consultation ran until June 18, reflecting strong interest from the antitrust community in the subject. The final version of the document will be prepared taking the comments received into account.
The Guide is intended to systematize the criteria for assessing cooperation agreements between competitors. It will cover practices such as associations, joint purchasing, consortia, and infrastructure-sharing partnerships. A separate chapter addresses the risks of exchanging competitively sensitive information. The draft also clarifies which forms of cooperation may be classified as acts of economic concentration subject to prior clearance by CADE.
The relevance of the document is underscored by a recent precedent: CADE’s General Superintendence previously suspended the soy moratorium on grain purchased from recently deforested land, an agreement involving the largest grain traders, which fueled debate over the limits of permissible cooperation among competitors, including in the area of sustainability. The final version of the Guide is expected to take this experience into account.
Source: CADE
An international automotive cartel in the electronic auto components market has been convicted
The CADE Tribunal unanimously convicted Japan’s Denso Corporation, part of the Toyota group, for participating in an international cartel in the electronic auto components market. The fine amounted to approximately $19.5 million. The investigation was opened by CADE’s General Superintendence in 2015 against 22 companies and 89 individuals.
According to the authority, between 2000 and 2008 the cartel members coordinated prices and commercial terms, allocated automakers’ orders among themselves, and divided markets, coordinating their actions primarily in Japan, where the headquarters of the companies involved are located. Proceedings against Denso’s employees were closed: the rapporteur of the case, Commissioner Camila Cabral, found it impossible to establish each individual’s specific contribution. At the same time, several former executives of Takata and Autoliv were fined.
The case illustrates how CADE applies antitrust law extraterritorially: the authority found that collusion arranged outside Brazil affected the domestic market through imported components supplied both directly to Brazilian vehicle assembly plants and as part of vehicles imported from abroad. The rapporteur stressed that, ultimately, Brazilian consumers bore the cost of the inflated prices.
Source: CADE
CADE has approved the transfer of control over Brava Energia to Colombia’s Ecopetrol
CADE’s General Superintendence unconditionally approved the acquisition of control over Brava Energia — one of Brazil’s largest oil and gas producers — by Colombia’s state-owned Ecopetrol. The deal involves Ecopetrol gaining control of 51% of Brava’s capital.
According to the regulator’s findings, the transaction poses no risks to competition in Brazil’s oil and gas exploration and production market. CADE’s approval removes one of the key regulatory hurdles to the deal, although its completion still depends on satisfying the requirements of the Securities Commission (CVM) and obtaining clearance from the National Petroleum Agency (ANP).
Source: Valor Econômico
The Tribunal has reopened an investigation into the food delivery market
The CADE Tribunal exercised its call-in power (avocação) and overturned the General Superintendence’s decision to close the investigation into food delivery service 99Food, owned by China’s DiDi. The case was triggered by a complaint from rival platform Keeta (part of Meituan), which pointed to 99Food’s use of contractual terms restricting restaurants’ cooperation with competing services.
Earlier, on June 25, the General Superintendence had closed the case, citing the need to await the outcome of parallel court proceedings in the São Paulo state court. However, the Tribunal identified a procedural inconsistency in the fact that the authority had closed the investigation without waiting for the court’s ruling and without adequately justifying its decision, and it considered the evidence gathered insufficient to reach a final conclusion on whether a violation had occurred.
The decision comes amid intensifying competition in the online food delivery market following Keeta’s entry into Brazil and 99Food’s renewed aggressive expansion. CADE’s Department of Economic Studies had previously prepared a paper on international experience in regulating such platforms, noting that multi-sided digital markets of this kind require ongoing oversight by the regulator.
Source: Bloomberg Línea
The B3 exchange is under suspicion of alleged abuse of dominant position
CADE’s General Superintendence recommended that the Tribunal find exchange operator B3 guilty of abusing its dominant position in the markets for registration and custody of financial assets and securities, as well as in the insurance registration market. The proposed fine amounts to roughly $19.2 million.
The investigation was opened in November 2022 following a complaint from CSD BR, a competitor developing an alternative infrastructure for the registration and custody of financial assets. According to the complainant and the authority’s own analysis, B3 offered commercial discounts as a means of drawing clients’ business into its own infrastructure, which in turn raised the cost for clients of switching to competitors and created obstacles to the interoperability of competing systems. In addition to the fine, the regulator proposed that the Tribunal require B3 to comply with a set of behavioral remedies.
Source: CADE
New proposals advance the reform of digital platform regulation
Work continues in the Chamber of Deputies on the digital markets bill (PL 4.675/2025), which would establish a CADE oversight regime for platforms of “systemic relevance,” modeled on the European Digital Markets Act. Under the new draft, the financial thresholds for designating a company as subject to oversight remain at global revenue above $9.6 billion or revenue in Brazil above $960 million.
The key change proposed in June concerns how qualitative criteria — such as network effects and control over data — are assessed: whereas the original text allowed a company to be designated as subject to oversight based on a single criterion, the new draft requires a “comprehensive and reasoned analysis” of the full set of characteristics, raising the bar for designation. At the same time, it is proposed to limit CADE’s power to independently expand the law’s scope through its own regulations.
Source: TELETIME
The Microsoft – Inflection AI case has exposed a new approach to reviewing AI deals
The case file on the act of economic concentration between Microsoft and Inflection AI (No. 08700.005792/2026-71) has become public. The documents show that the parties — and initially CADE’s General Superintendence as well — classified the deal as a “hiring of workforce” in the software development and licensing sector, rather than as an acquisition of an equity stake.
Lawyers note that this classification is notable in itself: it shows that CADE recognizes that deals transferring human capital can constitute an economic concentration even without a formal transaction to acquire equity. The regulator is also concerned about the risk of circumventing mandatory notification thresholds through the practice of acqui-hiring — hiring a startup’s key founders and specialists instead of acquiring the company itself.
Meanwhile, reviews continue into two similar transactions involving Google — the acquisitions of Windsurf’s and Hume AI’s technology — opened in May to determine whether mandatory notification is required. The regulator signaled that its approach will be systemic: the same logic is likely to be applied to all deals involving the transfer of technology or personnel in the AI market, regardless of the companies’ current revenue in Brazil.
Source: Migalhas
CADE continues its crackdown on cartels in public infrastructure procurement
In June, CADE issued several decisions at once concerning cartels that had operated in the allocation of public infrastructure contracts: most of the cases trace back to leniency agreements entered into over a decade ago as part of the famous Lava Jato investigation.
The Tribunal issued a final conviction of COESA S.A. and Salgueiro Construções S.A., along with eight senior executives, for a cartel in construction tenders. Proceedings against a number of other named companies, including Agis Construção and Serveng Civilsan, were closed for lack of sufficient evidence. During the same period, CADE’s General Superintendence recommended convicting 75 of the 102 parties implicated in a cartel involving infrastructure construction tenders, as well as 34 companies — including Andrade Gutierrez, Camargo Corrêa, and others — for a cartel in tenders held by state railway company Valec, with contracts worth a combined total of approximately $1.8 billion (covering construction of the Norte-Sul and Oeste-Leste rail lines). Separately, it recommended convicting 35 construction companies for a cartel in tenders for Petrobras projects, including the company’s headquarters in Vitória and the new Cenpes research center in Rio de Janeiro.
According to CADE, cartel arrangements in public tenders can inflate the final cost of government contracts by 10–20%, which, on the scale of multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects, translates into substantial losses of public funds. None of the General Superintendence’s recommendations discussed above is final: all have been referred to the CADE Tribunal, which may uphold, modify, or reject them.
Source: Atlas Público, Poder360
