Competition and Regulatory Newsletter

Buyer(s) beware – the European Commission imposes fines of €68 million on participants in a car battery purchasing cartel
 
The European Commission has fined three car battery recycling companies a combined total of €68 million for their participation in a cartel that fixed prices for the purchase of scrap automotive batteries. In order to reflect the nature of the cartel, the Commission took a novel approach when setting the level of fines and focussed on the amount of purchases affected by the cartel instead of using the value of sales, which is the conventional approach.

Also in this newsletter

• European Commission opens three investigations into suspected anti-competitive practices in e-commerce
• China’s Shandong provincial branch of NDRC fines a pharma firm RMB 120,000 for obstructing antitrust investigation
• German court rules that national courts are not fully bound by EU decisions to start a State aid investigation