EU slaps record fine on Roche for price fixing
The Swiss healthcare group, Roche, has been fined €462 million (SFr673 million) by the European Commission for its involvement in a vitamin price fixing cartel.
The European Commission announced a record fine of €855 million for eight price fixing cartels in vitamin products.
The two largest fines were the €462 million for Switzerland’s Roche and €296 million for German drug giant BASF for fixing the price of vitamins, costing European consumers billions of euros.
Roche said the fine was covered by existing provisions, but refused to make any further comment.
The EU’s competition commissioner Mario Monti described the case as “the most damaging series of cartels the Commission has ever investigated due to the sheer range of vitamins covered which are found in a multitude of products from cereals, biscuits and drinks to animal feed, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics”.
Roche singled out
The Commission singled out Roche as the main instigator of the price fixing. “The prime mover and main beneficiary of these schemes was Hoffmann-La Roche, the largest vitamin producer in the world with some 50 per cent of the overall market.
“BASF, the next largest vitamin producer worldwide, assumed a paramount role in following Hoffman-LaRoche’s lead,” it added.
The other companies fined were Avantis of France for €5.04 million, Solvay for €9.1 million, Merck of Germany for €9.24 million, Daiichi of Japan for €23.4 million, Eisai of Japan for €13.23 million and Takeda Chemical Industries for €37.05 million.
The conspiracies involved vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, D3, C, E Beta Carotene and vitamin premixes.
The Commission estimated that the European Economic Area market for the products covered in the decision was worth around €800 million in 1998.
The fines are on top of billions of dollars the firms have already paid in record fines and settlements in the United States, arising from an illegal cartel that forced consumers around the world to pay more for everything containing vitamins.
Since the US ruling, the Swiss company has introduced a company-wide training programme on anti-competitive behaviour and an internal audit group.
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