BRASILIA (Reuters)-Airlines Gol (GOLL4) and Azul () should stop making public comments on a potential merger unless they are prepared to formally pick it up, the president of the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (Cade) said in an interview with Reuters.
“They should stop talking about merging if they will not do or notify a merger,” said Cade’s president Gustavo Augusto, in an interview on Friday night.
Last week, Cade determined that companies have to formally notify the competition agency up to 30 days about the May 2024 Codeshare Agreement and prevented them from extending the partnership to additional routes before the agency’s business evaluation.
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This order did not require the two aviation companies to provide information on a potential merger, but Augusto made CADE’s concern clearly with the impact on the plans market prematurely and later left unresolved.
“When it is a company that has stocks, which you have a dominant position in the market and you have to have a concern, caution about your communication, you should not announce a merger, acquisition operation, which is not ready and has not been presented to regulatory authorities,” said Augusto.
Earlier this year, Blue and Abra, a major investor of Gol and Avianca, signed a memorandum of non -binding understanding.
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The proposed combination aims to strengthen operations, with both airlines alleging complementarity of 90% routes – a situation that Cade will need to check if the business goes ahead. In response to Reuters on Monday, Azul said it will analyze Cade’s decision on Codeshare’s agreement and has denied any “gun jumping” practice, in which companies are involved in prefusion integration without regulatory approval.
Gol stated that Codeshare is a standard practice in the air sector and added that the company has always respected regulatory decisions.
Both airlines refused to comment on potential melting plans.
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The main executives of both companies have indicated in recent months that they have been prioritizing their respective restructuring processes before any potential combination. The airlines did not publicly abandon the possibility of a fusion.
Azul filed a request for judicial protection in the United States in May, a few days before Gol left its own restructuring process.
