PRESS RELEASE

A FINE EXCEEDING ONE HUNDRED MILLION EUROS FOR AN ANTI-COMPETITIVE AGREEMENT AMONG VENDING OPERATORS

The ICA imposed a fine exceeding 100 million Euros on the main vending operators in the food and beverage sector and on their category association. In particular, the ICA ascertained the existence of an anti-competitive agreement – infringing art. 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union – among the following companies: Gruppo Argenta; D.A.EM. and its controlled companies Molinari, Dist.Illy, Aromi, Dolomatic and Govi (Gruppo Buonristoro); Ge.s.a, Gruppo Illiria, IVS Italia, Liomatic, Ovdamatic, Sogeda, Sellmat, SE.RI.M., Supermatic and the association CONFIDA (Associazione Italiana Distribuzione Automatica).

The agreement aimed at maintaining high prices and at preserving the companies’ profitability. It therefore consisted in allocating the market and customers, as well as coordinating sale prices. The mentioned companies defined each other as “competing friends,” avoiding to submit offers to each others’ customers on the occasion of calls for tenders on the basis of a “non-belligerence agreement.” The latter provided for a compensation mechanism based on giving back customers of equivalent value (in terms of allocation) to each “competing friend” in case of possible subtractions of customers within the ambit of the companies’ commercial activity.

Price coordination also involved the category association (CONFIDA). In particular, the conduct consisted in stopping the market’s aggressive conducts related to prices on the occasion of external events (such as, adjustment to the VAT increase from 4 to 10% for products sold through vending machines as provided for by D.L. 63/2013) risking to endanger the collusive balance reached by the parties. In fact, CONFIDA was an essential element in this sense due to the broad scope of its interventions (circulars, press releases, meeting on the territory, etc.), towards the majority of companies operating in the national market.

The agreement produced anti-competitive effects, enabling the parties to maintain a substantial stability in their market shares, at least from 2010 to 2014. Moreover, despite the period of crisis, between 2008 and 2014, the sale price of the main products increased proportionally more than underlying costs.

The complex and continuous sole agreement was entered into between 2007 and 2008, although evidence can be found even prior to said years. According to the ICA’s ascertainment, the agreement lasted at least until inspections, carried out between July 2014 and March 2015 at the premises of the parties involved, with the collaboration of the ICA’s Special Unit of the Guardia di Finanza.

Rome, 14 June 2016