Court defeat for steel 'cartel'

The European courts on Thursday have delivered a stinging blow to six large European steel firms, including Anglo-Dutch giant Corus, by dismissing their appeals to have large fines for cartel price fixing quashed.

Six out of the eight companies originally bringing their case to Luxembourg, including Corus and German firms Thyssen and Krupp - now merged together - had their bids dismissed by the European Court of Justice.

Only French firm Arbed, now Arcelor, had their fines set by European regulators eradicated completely.

The fine incurred by Spanish company Aristrain was sent back to the EU’s lower court, the Court of First Instance (CFI), for recalculation.

Corus, as principal offender, and 13 other firms were fined a total of €100 million by European Commission regulators four years ago for price fixing, information sharing and market-rigging activities in steel beams.

The fines for the top offenders were subsequently reduced by about a third on appeal to the CFI.

Eight firms out of the original 17 implicated in the cartel ring launched a new bid under the European judicial system to have their penalties slashed further or rubbed out altogether.

The court, as expected, followed in the main the non-binding opinions from European ‘advocate general’ judges in 1999 calling for the new appeals to be thrown out for several of the steel giants, including Corus.  

The binding court judgments follow the opinions of the advocate generals in about 80 per cent of cases.

 

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