Brazil is going through an institutional transition in the provision of public services, which had historically been supplied by State monopolies. A core element in this process is been the creation of a new form of public sector institutions - regulatory agencies with operational and financial autonomy. In this paper we identify their most important decisions and provide detailed analysis of the economic and political context in which they have been taken. We then compare Brazil with some of its peers and argue that its regulatory performance has been rather satisfactory so far, although four main problems must be solved: a. clear governance inadequacies in the coordination between different bodies; b. unclear definition of their respective competencies; c. lack of regulatory sovereignty; and d. inadequacies in design of the new antitrust agency.