The new Brazilian Competition Law (Law 12.529/2011), which came
into force in May 2012, provided significant changes to the
national legal system. The turnover criteria for the mandatory
submission of concentration acts refers to a very important one,
considering it is responsible for the reduction of cases often
involving minor competition concerns. In view of such changes, the
Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE), antitrust
Brazilian watchdog, was able to shift a substantial part of its
resources to investigations of anticompetitive conducts, which have
been mostly focused on Cartel cases since 2003.
According to the Brazilian Antitrust Law, cartels concern any
anti-competitive practices involving agreements, combinations,
manipulations or arrangements among competitors for the purpose of:
(i) fixing prices of goods or services; (ii) restricting or
limiting the production or sale of goods or provision of amount or
frequency of services; (iii) splitting
