Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense (“CADE”) approved, in the last trial session, held on August 18th 2017, the partial acquisition of the Brazilian operation of Citibank Bank by Itau Bank. The acquisition was partial because it only involved the credit market, which consists of 71 agencies in 26 cities.
It was feared that the great severity shown in the two recent cases (Kroton/Estácio and Ipiranga/Alesat) would remain in this case, but it did not occur; it was pointed out, for example, that this procedure is much smaller than the acquisition of HSBC by Bradesco, approved in 2016.
However, behavior remedies (restrictions on competitive language) were applied. To clarify, remedies can be structural (where there is an obligation, for example, of selling assets) or behavioral (where there are obligations to do or not do something). In this case, the main remedy is the obligation to not acquire any other financial institution for 30 months (which does not include Itau / XP, already under review by Cade).
2017/08/28
