Diogo Thomson takes over CADE's presidency

On 12 April, Commissioner Diogo Thomson de Andrade becomes interim president of the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE), after the presidential handover by Gustavo Augusto. Few civil servants know the agency as well as Mr Thomson, who has worked at the agency for almost twenty years, and participated in some of the most significant moments in Brazil’s competition policy.

He joined the agency as an attorney in 2007, having worked, since then, through every stage of the institutional framework of the Brazilian competition authority. Mr Thomson worked in litigation, administrative investigations, and management, reaching the position of Assistant Superintendent in 2012, which he occupied for over a decade. During this period, he served as interim Superintendent General from July to October 2017, and from July 2021 to April 2022, taking over the office at critical times for the agency. The new president also worked in the Antitrust Department of the Secretariat for Economic Monitoring at the Ministry of Justice between 2011 and 2012, and has been a federal prosecutor at the Office of the Attorney General (AGU) since 2004.

In 2023, Thomson joined the Tribunal of CADE as a commissioner, completing a journey that had led him to understand the authority from every perspective, including advocacy, investigation, management, and adjudication.

In the position, he contributed to the development of extensive case law on price-fixing practices by professional councils, with emphasis on the CRECI/GO case, and deepened the debate on vertical restrictions in the Consulta Pirelli case. In the field of merger reviews, Diogo Thomson led investigations of major transactions, such as the one involving Tim and Telefônica. Recently, his decision in the Google News case has placed CADE at the forefront of the regulatory debate on digital markets, consolidating the agency's role as an international benchmark in the analysis of conduct on platforms.

Mr Thomson, who holds a PhD in Law from the Brasília Institute of Education, Development and Research (IDP) and a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Law from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), brings the experience of almost two decades of uninterrupted service in the defence of competition in Brazil to the presidency.