Cade imposes restrictions to Allpark’s acquisition of parking areas

The Administrative Council for Economic Defense – CADE approved under conditions, on Wednesday (06), the acquisition of companies providing parking areas services by Allpark Empreendimentos, Participações e Serviços S/A. The first operation consists on the purchase of Bagattini Participações Ltda. And of CGB Participações Ltda (Merger nº 08012.011323/2010-81). The second merger corresponds to the acquisition of Zylpin Participações Ltda (Merger nº 08012.000109/2011-81).

The Council decided that Allpark cannot have more than 33% of market share, resulted by mergers, within 354 meter raid from the parking areas acquired.

In his decision, the reporting Commissioner, Ricardo Ruiz, mentioned that Brazil has been going through, particularly in the last decade, a strong growth of its car fleet, which increases the search for parking spaces, mostly in the great metropolitan centers.

“As direct consequence of the increasing demand, the parking areas sector has presented an intense raise of prices in the last years. Such behavior results from the fact that the parking spaces offer cannot put up with the growing demand”, explained the commissioner. Ruiz pointed out data from the Brazilian Geography and Statistics Institute (IBGE, for its acronym in Portuguese), which demonstrates that between 2010 and 2013 the parking areas price raised more than 50%.

“By the end of the analysis and going through every necessary stage, it can be seen that there is the need to adopt an intervention in order to avoid a possible harm to the consumer resulting from the operations”, concluded the reporting commissioner.

To take away competition issues, CADE established at the Trial session of the operations the maximum limit of 33% of market concentration to Allpark in a 354 meter raid from each parking area acquired. This percentage allows the existence of at least two other effective competitors, avoiding a situation of duopoly, which would increase the possibility of coordinated conducts.

Allpark acts under the brands Estapar and Hora Park with the management of its own, third parties’ and public parking areas. The company works with more than 250 thousand spaces of 900 parking areas in 14 states. Since 2009 BTG Pactual investment bank is an associate of the business.

Estapar owns parking areas in commercial condominiums, business, hotels, flats, educational institutions, metro and road terminals, showplaces, clubs, shopping centers, hospitals, airports and bank branches. Estapar also provides the Digital Blue Zone service to public parking areas under the brand Hora Park in four Brazilian states.