2018 was a challenging year for competition law in Brazil. The Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) had to deal with a variety of important topics: from investigations related to the truck drivers’ strike to intellectual property cases CADE had been dealing with for almost a decade; from mergers in the financial, steel, agrochemical and other industries to cases stemming from the Carwash Operation.
While we do not plan to write about every single case that CADE assessed in 2018, our goal is to review the most important cases to offer (i) a guide summarizing the basic aspects of the year’s major antitrust discussions and (ii) a record of how antitrust enforcement is evolving in Brazil. We hope this material is helpful to competition scholars and practitioners in Brazil and abroad. We also hope it helps the business community to have an overview of the current path of competition policy.
May this be the first edition of many that will follow the next years.
