Cade will analyze IBM/Red Hat merger

The Administrative Council for Economic Defense Tribunal (CADE, in its acronym in Portuguese) called the merger regarding the acquisition of Red Hat by IBM to trial, during last Wednesday judgement session (June 26).

IBM acts globally in the development, production and trading of a wide range of information technology solutions, more specifically in software and corporate IT systems. The company submitted to CADE the acquisition proposal of 100% of the corporate control of Red Hat, which supplies open source software and technical support to corporate customers at a global level.

During the session, CADE’s president, Alexandre Barreto, highlighted the importance of the Tribunal’s assessment of the competition concerns presented by the General Superintendence (SG/CADE) in its opinion, which approved the operation.

The analysis of SG/CADE pointed out the possibility, even if remote, of limiting the competition due to vertical integrations in the markets of Server Operating Systems (operating systems to manage the hardware of personal computer or server), Software-Defined Storage Controller (programs used to optimize storage resources) and Container Infrastructure Software (small, light and isolated virtual workspaces in an operating system that are used to create, host and install an application).

Mrs. Paula Azevedo was designated Reporting Commissioner of this proceeding.