• The Council for Economic Defense (CADE) today approved the merger between LAN and TAM in a unanimous vote.
• The Brazilian authority considers two conditions in its decisions, which are in line to what LAN offered to the Chilean Fiscalía Nacional Economica (FNE) last January, through an out-of-court agreement and were afterward reiterated by Chile’s antitrust court (TDLC).
• Cade’s conditions included giving up two pairs of slots at the Guarulhos Airport for the Sao Paulo-Santiago route and an eventual resignation to one of the airline’s Alliances LAN and TAM are part of today.

Brazil’s antitrust regulator, the Council for Economic Defence (CADE) today approved the merger between LAN and TAM in a unanimous vote. The CADE imposed only two conditions to the merger, which are both in line to what LAN offered to the Chilean Fiscalía Nacional Economica (FNE) on past January, through an out-of-court agreement and that were afterward reiterated by Chile’s antitrust court (TDLC), in a consultation process which ended with the approval of the merger by the court. ?

This represents the conclusion of the regulation approval process necessary in the merger between the two airlines in Brazil. Both airlines remain confident that the merger will be completed during the estimated calendar, in the first quarter of 2012.

The full report of CADE’s ruling is expected to be available shortly. In Brazil, the merger was already approved by different authorities, such as the ANAC (Civil Aviation National Agency), the Secretariat for Economic Monitoring (SEAE) of the Ministry of Finance, and by the Brazil's Secretariat of Economic Law (SDE) of the Ministry of Justice.
Regarding pending steps to concrete the merger, an extraordinary meeting of shareholders of LAN Airlines has been called for December 21, 2011 to seek approval of the terms and conditions of the merger and of the entities that will hold the TAM shares after the Exchange Offer occurs.