Germany's Federal Cartel Office said Thursday that BMW, Volkswagen and Daimler had agreed to pay a multimillion euro fine for secretly fixing prices when buying steel products
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st November, 2019) Germany's Federal Cartel Office said Thursday that BMW, Volkswagen and Daimler had agreed to pay a multimillion euro fine for secretly fixing prices when buying steel products."The Bundeskartellamt has imposed fines totalling around 100 million Euros [$111 million]... for anticompetitive practices in the purchase of long steel products," the statement read.
The watchdog said the fine could be appealed, but the three automakers did not deny the findings and agreed to a settlement, which affected the size of the total debt.
The regulator's president, Andreas Mundt, said it was established that the trio regularly met with long steel manufacturers and other suppliers between 2004 and 2013 to "exchange information" on purchase surcharges.
"Insofar as the surcharges were no longer negotiated individually with the suppliers as a consequence of these talks, price competition between the companies on these price components was eliminated," he explained.
Long steel is used to make a wide range of car parts. During the "period of infringement," surcharges accounted on average for roughly a third of the end price of engineering steel, the agency calculated.
