CADE: what is the outlook for Brazil’s antitrust authority in 2025?

Key positions at the Brazilian Antitrust Authority (CADE) will change this year – above all, the term of the current president, Alexandre Cordeiro, is set to expire in July. Cordeiro has been at the agency for nearly ten years, serving as General Superintendent from 2019-2021, after which he assumed leadership of the authority. CADE’s president has the important prerogative of the ‘casting vote’ for decisions on merger reviews and investigations of anticompetitive conducts at CADE’s Tribunal. The president at CADE is officially appointed by the Brazilian president and must be approved by the Senate.

After having served two terms, Prosecutor Waldir Alves’s position as CADE’s representative at the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) will become vacant in May 2025. At this stage, the new representative has yet to be appointed by Brazil’s Attorney General. The representative’s responsibilities include preparing opinions to support CADE’s Tribunal in administrative proceedings for anticompetitive conducts, and filing complaints with CADE’s General Superintendence in order to launch investigations.

Highlights

Last year, the Brazilian Ministry of Finance’s Secretariat for Economic Reforms released an important report with proposals to regulate digital platforms in Brazil. As mentioned previously, the report suggested amending the Brazilian Competition Law (Law No. 12,529/2011) and introducing new regulatory measures targeted at digital platforms. In October 2024, CADE issued an official statement supporting the proposals, and put itself forward as the potential regulator for digital platforms by means of a new specialized and dedicated unit at CADE’s General Superintendence. Discussions around the new regulations are expected to progress during 2025.

In 2024, CADE also published its Non-Horizontal Merger Guidelines (V+ Guidelines), which instruct on the criteria the authority uses in merger reviews of non-horizontal transactions based on its decisional practice (further details on the V+ Guidelines are available here). Moreover, CADE also released its Guidelines for Trustees in an effort to improve its oversight of independent third parties that assist the authority in ascertaining if companies are complying with decisions and settlements. CADE is expected to publish other important material in 2025, such as updated leniency guidelines (a draft version of which was submitted to public consultation last year), an economic study on medications (systematizing important precedents in the market), and a document on the competitive effects of RAN-sharing agreements in the telecommunications sector.

2025 may bring about important developments in initiatives advocating for protecting competition. In February 2025, the first public consultation for the Regulatory and Competition Assessment Procedure (PARC) was opened. The PARC was created by the Ministry of Finance’s Secretariat for Economic Reforms at the end of last year, replacing the existing FIARC procedure. Running until February 26, this public consultation invited citizens, companies, and other interested parties to participate in a regulatory review process to identify and correct regulations that may restrict competition, with the goal of promoting a more efficient and transparent business environment in Brazil. Stakeholders had the possibility of flagging potentially anticompetitive regulations, presenting competition-focused regulatory impact studies, and providing details on adverse market effects.

For more information on this topic, please contact Mattos Filho’s Antitrust practice area.