Work Area: Cartels

The UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal has banned direct communications between defendants and class members in a roll-on, roll-off collective claim upon finding it was “not proper conduct” for Baker Botts and Steptoe & Johnson to write letters urging businesses to withdraw from the lawsuit.

29 November 2022

An Australian court has sentenced a former manager at an active pharmaceutical ingredient producer to almost three years in jail for his role in a criminal cartel, although he will not actually see the inside of a cell.

29 November 2022

The European Commission has fined five buyers of styrene monomer a combined €157 million after they admitted to colluding on purchase price negotiations and exchanging sensitive commercial information.

29 November 2022

Norway’s antitrust watchdog has fined the country’s four largest book publishers a combined €52 million for colluding to exchange information through an online library and bookstore information database.

29 November 2022

Three years after its creation, the Department of Justice’s Procurement Collusion Strike Force has established a commitment to stomping out bid-rigging affecting contracts across the US government, several lawyers have said.

29 November 2022

Hong Kong’s Competition Commission has raided one of the territory’s most important fish markets, as part of a joint operation with local organised crime investigators.

28 November 2022

Japan’s antitrust watchdog is reportedly gearing up to impose its highest-ever cartel fines on three electric utility companies that allegedly agreed not to compete with each other after the country’s electricity market was deregulated in 2016.

28 November 2022

Austria’s antitrust watchdog has asked the country’s highest court to rebuke a lower court for refusing to review and amend a leniency applicant’s cartel fine, arguing that the purported legal loophole does not exist.

25 November 2022

The National Board of Surgical Technology and Surgical Assisting (NBSTSA) has labelled allegations that it conspired to boycott a professional group representing surgical assistants “riddled with defects”.

25 November 2022

Australia’s Federal Court has sanctioned the country’s largest overhead crane supplier for entering into an illegal market sharing agreement with a competitor despite the companies never implementing the conspiracy.

23 November 2022