Brazil's antitrust regulator Cade approved "without restrictions" the acquisition of Chilean systems integrator Synapsis by local IT services firm Tivit.

The decision was published on Monday in the country's federal gazette.

Tivit announced on August 7 it had reached an agreement to buy Synapsis for as much as 450mn reais (US$204mn). The deal represents Tivit's first acquisition and will allow it to expand its presence outside Brazil.

Carlos Gazaffi, Tivit's VP of technology, told BNamericas that the full integration of operations of the two firms should take around a year.

Synapsis CEO Leonardo Covalschi told BNamericas in a separate interview that Tivit-Synapsis will have combined revenues of around 2.3bn reais this year.

  

M&As 

Mergers and acquisitions in Brazil involved nearly 132bn reais in resources in the first eight months of the year, compared to 127bn reais in 2013 as a whole, according to data from consultancy Transactional Track Record (TTR) reported by financial daily Valor Econômico.

TTR tracks announced transactions, and not just those closed. As of August, 504 deals were announced, compared to 841 in all 2013.

Another study, from consultancy Mergermarket in partnership with Merrill DataSite, says Brazil registered 166 M&As in the same period. The survey also takes into account announced deals, but only those above US$5mn.

The study shows the number of operations is down 28.7% compared to the same period of 2013, and the total value of deals is 6.7% lower. 

In neither study did the IT segment lead operations, though.



BN Americas - http://www.bnamericas.com/news/technology/brazil-antitrust-body-okays-tivit-synapsis-merger