AGCM

The Authority therefore decided to fine Unicredit Euro 1,500,000 and Intesa Sanpaolo, BNL and MPS Euro 50,000 each, taking into consideration the EU Commission's guidelines with regard to the various parties' turnover in INAIL cashier services: Unicredit enjoyed the lion's share of this business.

The investigation was begun on 28 May 2007 following a complaint lodged by the Institute stating that for three consecutive tendering cycles it had not been possible to award the contract.

The Authority held that since 1996, when the four banks (then Credito Italiano, Banca Commerciale Italiana, BNL, MPS), acting as an RTI (temporary corporate grouping), submitted the winning bid for the five-year INAIL cashier contract, a detailed arrangement had been in place in contravention of the competition provisions of the EU Treaty. Such arrangement had to do with coordinating the manner of the banks' participation in bids and resulted in an original agreement leading to the temporary corporate grouping for the 1996 tender. Coordination continued with a series of negotiations and accommodations in order to share out the proportion of the service to be attributed to each individual bank within the RTI, until May 2006, the deadline for presenting bids for the most recent tender.

The investigation found that in the 1996 tender process (the so-called “bid zero”) the four banks chose to present themselves as an RTI, not with the legitimate aim of securing the contract but in order to avoid reciprocal competitive pressure. Subsequently, thanks to the prerequisite that for each tender at least two bids must be received, they conducted themselves in such a way that the contract their RTI won in 1996 was extended several times until 2007.

In determining the appropriate fine, the Authority also took into account the key role played by Unicredit in maintaining this arrangement.

Rome, 17 December 2008