Petrobras, concerning the sale process of PetroquímicaSuape and Citepe, Petrobras wholly-owned subsidiaries, to Alpek, informs that the General Superintendence of the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) published a dispatch yesterday declaring the Act of Concentration to be complex and ordering the execution of a few diligences.

The declaration of complexity is procedural act defined in article 56 of Law No. 12,529/2011 and in article 160 of CADE Internal Rules, which enables the Superintendence to order the execution of complementary instruction, specifying the diligences to be carried out, and furthermore granting the competition authority the ability to request the extension of the deadline by up to 90 days, thus altering the deadline for transaction analysis from 240 to 330 days.

The main diligences ordered were: (i) preparation of a quantitative study on the impacts to competition arising from the transaction by the CADE’s Department of Economic Studies (DEE); (ii) present the economic efficiencies generated by the operation; (iii) request data from competitors.

Petrobras will continue to collaborate with CADE in order to obtain the approval of the transaction within the legal deadline, and keep the market informed of any relevant decision.

In addition to the approval by CADE, the completion of the transaction is still subject to compliance with other usual preceding conditions.