The Competition Authority sanctioned twelve companies in the household appliances sector this Thursday, December 19, for having agreed on prices for seven years, between 2007 and 2014. They will have to pay fines of up to 611 million euros.
Ten appliance manufacturers and two distributors sanctioned for colluding on prices. The French Competition Authority announced in a press release this Thursday, December 19 that they will have to pay a total of 611 million euros in fines for having agreed to maintain higher selling prices between 2007 and 2014.
The sanctioned companies are BSH, Candy Hoover, Eberhardt, Electrolux, Whirlpool (as successor to Indesit), LG, Miele, SEB, Smeg, Whirlpool, Boulanger and Darty. The objective of these agreements was to “reduce competition, particularly from online distributors, and maintain high sales prices for consumers”, specifies the Authority.
The means put in place ranged from banning the sale of certain products on the internet to communicating “recommended retail prices” by manufacturers with “coded language to hide price instructions”. A «surveillance» had also been implemented to ensure that distributors respected the agreement. Distributors exclusively active on the internet claimed to have been discriminated against if they did not have physical stores.
“Traditional distributors including the two main ones, Darty and Boulanger, fully participated in these agreements,” underlines the Competition Authority, insisting on the “weight” of the two behemoths which sought to ensure that “the products they sold would not be significantly cheaper elsewhere, particularly online.”
109 million euros in fines against Darty, 84 million against Boulanger
Fnac Darty said in a press release that the amount of its fine amounted to 109 million euros. The group had provisioned, from the first half of 2023, no less than 84 million euros in anticipation of this sanction and “will record an additional charge of 24 million euros for the 2024 financial year, without impact on current operating income”. Like nine others, Fnac Darty had decided not to contest the complaint notified by the Competition Authority for “quickly put an end to a complex procedure” and devote himself to his “strategic plan”.
The manufacturer SEB and the distributor Boulanger chose to contest the complaints and were fined 189.5 and 84.35 million euros respectively. In a press release, SEB assured that it “will file an appeal” before the Paris Court of Appeal, rejecting “any allegation that its practices did not comply with competition rules”. Electrolux announced in a press release that it had taken note of the sanction of 44.5 million euros, provisioned in its accounts from 2023. A first sanction, for a total amount of 189 million euros, had already been pronounced in 2018 in this same case against six of the manufacturers sanctioned again by this Thursday’s decision.
