Cartel Cost - 25/08/2010

The significant rise in "follow on" litigation arising from cartel investigations is doubtless due to the continuing challenging economic climate. Companies who have been affected, either directly or indirectly, by anti-competitive behaviour uncovered by the discovery of a price fixing cartel are far more likely to seek to recover their financial losses arising from the behaviour.

Pilkington, of the UK; Asahi, of Japan; Guardian, of the US; Saint-Gobain, of France conspired to fix the price of flat glass to car manufacturers and carve up the market between them. The Competition Commissioner said the cartel "cheated the car industry and car buyers for five years in a market worth two billion euros in the last year of the cartel"

Volvo has instructed its lawyers to recover what has been described as "significant losses" suffered during the five years of inflated glass prices.

Similarly two flower importers who claim to have suffered losses due to the BA; Air France; KLM; Cathay Pacific; Cargolux; Quantas and Emirates, price-fixing cartel for air-freight services have instructed their lawyers to recover their losses from BA.

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