Biography: Competition

Mr Pereira Neto is a leading partner at Pereira Neto, Galdino, Macedo Advogados – PNGM, listed as one of the top 45 firms in the country by the prestigious Latin Lawyer 250 ranking (2012).

Mr Pereira Neto heads the antitrust and regulatory team of the firm. He has extensive experience in representing clients in merger control, cartel and abuse of dominance investigations, as well as developing compliance programmes to companies and associations. He is also well known for working in a number of issues at the interface of regulation and competition matters in different industries, including telecommunications, ethanol, railways and payment cards.

PNGM's competition practice has been substantially increasing in recent years and its publicly known clients include companies such as OI/Telemar, Contax, Telefonica, UTC, Odebrecht, OAS, Cielo, Braskem, Serasa/Experian, Hankuk Electric Glass Co, Elpida Memory Inc, Ultragaz, Sinditelebrasil, and União da Indústria de Cana de Açúcar - UNICA.

Mr Pereira Neto earned a bachelor of law degree from the University of São Paulo (1998) and a master of laws LLM (2002) and a doctor of juridical science – JSD (2005) from Yale Law School (US), where he also acted as a researcher in association with the Information Society Project. He has worked as consultant to the World Bank (2004) evaluating proposed changes in the regulatory framework of infrastructure industries and advising governments on competition policy.

Mr Pereira Neto held office as director of the economic defence and protection department of the Ministry of Justice (1999-2000) and national manager of the Economic and Defence Programme (1999-2000), where he was responsible for the coordination among the Brazilian antitrust authorities (Secretariat of Economic Law (SDE), Secretariat of Economic Monitoring (SEAE) and the Economic Defence Administrative Council (CADE).

He is currently a professor of economic law at Fundação Getúlio Vargas Law School (São Paulo, SP), where he teaches competition law and regulation. He is also the author of several articles, published in Brazil and abroad, on matters related to antitrust law and economic regulation.

His competition law practice has been recognised by many specialised rankings, including PLC Which Lawyer, Best Lawyers, and Chambers and Partners Latin America 2012, where he is described as "one of the top antitrust lawyers in Brazil: highly skilled, pragmatic, and combining practical experience with academic knowledge".