Brazil: Month-long delay in nominations paralyzes CADE

Brazil’s Administrative Council of Economic Defense (CADE), responsible for evaluating and approving business mergers, is undergoing a period of uncertainty as it begins the second half of the year, as the Board of Directors has seen paralyzed since the beginning of July, with only two members and four empty positions, meaning the agency has not been able to form the quorum required to rule on upcoming mergers.

Two academics, economist Leonardo Bandeira Rezende and the State Attorney of Paraná, Vinicius Klein, would have been appointed to fill two of these positions. However, the two nominations were withdrawn by President Jair Bolsonaro, leaving the agency’s operation on shaky ground.

At the moment, CADE continues its paralysis, with up to 70 merger operations waiting for a turn to be analyzed, in what some observers have criticized as a flagrant case of political play in the capital Brasilia, which jeopardizes the legal certainty that is fundamental for a good investment environment and for the privatization processes that are expected will be carried out by the government.
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