The Commission for the Promotion and Defense of Competition (Coprodec) of the Ministry of Economy once again ruled against the latest proposal submitted by Minerva for the purchase of Marfrig’s assets in Uruguay. Therefore, the possibility of Minerva acquiring Marfrig’s assets is definitively discarded.
Coprodec stated it decided to “deny the request for authorization for the economic concentration submitted by ATHN FOODS HOLDINGS S.A. (Minerva), MARFRIG GLOBAL FOODS S.A. (Marfrig) and ALLANA MAGELLAN S.L.”
Minerva’s third proposal for the transaction to proceed included the commitment to sell in not more than two years the Inaler plant in San José, which was in addition to the commitment to immediately sell Establecimientos Colonia to the Indian group Allana. Therefore, within a maximum of two years Minerva would have operated five slaughterhouses in Uruguay (the four it currently owns and Cledinor, in Salto).
On August 28, Marfrig had already announced that, after the deadline to complete the transaction had passed, the deal was nullified. Minerva did not agree, arguing it was still waiting for Coprodec’s ruling, which ultimately was negative. Coprodec did not rule on “the conflicting views between Minerva and Marfrig.”
Coprodec justified that “the comprehensive evaluation and weighting of the elements incorporated in the file allow us to conclude that there is sufficient evidence proving that the projected concentration transaction falls within the prohibitive cases of Article 9 of Law No. 18.159; in particular, due to the risk of unilateral exercise of buying power, the insufficiency of the alleged efficiencies and the remedies proposed (both in their ‘Extended’ version (the sale of Colonia to Allana) and ‘Alternative’ (the sale of Inaler)), as well as the incompatibility of the non-compete clause with effective competition, thus the requested authorization must be denied.”
