French authorities bust 20 courier firms for price-fixing

Here we go again, with yet another case of cargo companies allegedly sharing information that led to price-fixing. The French antitrust authority, Autorité de la concurrence, fined 20 parcel courier companies a total of €672 million (or US$733 million) for sharing information between 2004 and 2010.

Most of the anticompetitive activity occurred at meetings held in conjunction with the professional trade union body in France, the TLF, which was also fined by the antitrust watchdog. The eight largest firms that met at these events represented 71 percent of the market at the time they were held, the authority said.

Geodis SA, which is owned by French railway company SNCF, was hit the hardest, with a penalty of €196.1 million. Other courier firms listed in the cartel-busting action included Chronopost (€99 million), Exapaq (now DPD France, €45 million), Dachser France (€33 million), DHL Express France (€81 million), FedEx Express France (€17 million), Gefco (€31 million), GLS France (€55 million), Norbert Dentressangle Distribution (€10 million), Schenker-Joyau (now Schenker France, €3 million) and TNT Express France  (€58 million). Royal Mail said it will pay a €55.1 million settlement.

Six smaller companies – Ciblex , Heppner, Lambert and Valletta , XP France, Transport Henri Ducros and Ziegler – were given a 90 percent reduction in their fines due to their current financial difficulties. When the authority calculated the penalties, it also took into account the duration of the illegal practices.

Fifteen of the named companies were also accused of passing along the cost of increases in the price of diesel fuel to their clients, which would show up as surcharges at the bottom of their invoices. These companies were fined €1.4 million for the surcharge activity occurring between 2004 and 2006.

The alleged collusion was brought to the attention of Autorité de la concurrence by the Deutsche Bahn Group (Schenker-France) at the end of 2008, and by Kuehne + Nagel Group in 2010. The two companies applied for reduced fines in exchange for their cooperation under the European Commission’s leniency guidelines. DB was nonetheless fined €3 million for failing to inform investigators of an anticompetitive meeting it attended in September 2010. Kuehne + Nagel, which fully cooperated, received a 30 percent reduction in its fine, but its Alloin unit was still was fined €32 million.

The authority said the 20 companies held secret discussions, during which no minutes were taken. Considerable evidence about these meetings was seized during dawn raids conducted in September 2010. For instance, during TLF trade negotiation meetings for 2006-2007, the raids revealed that the majority of the companies involved raised their prices 7 percent rather than an initially discussed 5 percent after sharing information.