Seeking short-term solutions to financial or market problems by agreeing with competitors to share customers, allocate territories or apply certain price levels can be tempting, particularly during hard times. Rival marketing and sales executives will meet at seasonal industry events and may be tempted to share strategies or to reach an understanding about future conduct.

In the late 1980s many of the leading producers of vitamins participated in a cartel to fix their prices in response to a drop in prices worldwide. Similar behaviour has also been seen in the citric acid industry in response to a rapid price decline, and producers of graphite electrodes formed a cartel after a decline in consumption. The airline sector has also been awash with investigations into admitted and alleged cartel activity in recent years, centred around secret so-called ‘coffee meetings’.

The penal risks of cartel behaviour, even in response to difficult economic times, are extremely high and companies need top quality legal assistance in managing such risks and defending effectively any litigation.

Our service

If you have or may have been involved in a cartel, the risks to your business are severe. Our priority is to protect you and to enable you to focus on developing your business. 

Protecting you in such circumstances requires a relationship of trust. This is the cornerstone of ensuring that the risk to the business is properly assessed and appropriate remedial action is taken. That is why we invest so much in fostering strong working relationships with you.

We offer advice about the risks and consequences of price-fixing or cartel behaviour to provide practical, commercial solutions.

Our experience

We have extensive experience in protecting you wherever and however you may feel threatened by a cartel: where you have been or may have been involved in a cartel, when you are worried about trends or features in your markets or where your suppliers, competitors or customers may have been involved in a cartel. In particular, we have the depth of experience to:

• carry out compliance audits to identify risk factors
• co-ordinate multi-jurisdiction action
• provide a robust defence, or an aggressive attack
• take swift action, with a long-term vision
• protect individuals

Notable cases

• We successfully advised Japanese air carrier All Nippon Airways in a European Commission investigation into its alleged involvement in an air freight cartel.
  
  The investigation involved 25 airlines including British Airways, Lufthansa, Air France-KLM and Cathay Pacific. In what has been described as one of the largest cartel cases ever handled by the Commission, 13 of those investigated were found culpable with penalties ranging from zero for the immunity applicant, to €182.9 millions for Air France. The Commission fined airlines a total of €799 million.
  
  The global price-fixing cartel involved fuel surcharges and security surcharges. ANA was cleared of involvement and was not fined by the Commission.
  
  
• We are advising a Japanese auto parts manufacturer on its involvement in a cartel case which is being investigated in the USA, Europe and Japan. Dawn raids have already taken place.
  
  
• We recently advised a Japanese company on a request for information sent by the European Commission in connection with suspected anti-competitive behaviour. Our team of 40 lawyers and paralegals in London, Brussels, Hamburg and Paris carried out a swift and comprehensive review of more than two million documents so that we could advise quickly on antitrust risk including immunity/leniency matters.