Specialty steel companies fined €205 million for price-fixing in Germany

The cartelists were found to have concluded price-fixing agreements and to have exchanged competitively sensitive information.  

The FCO has confirmed that it has imposed fines on producers/processors and traders of specialty steel products, including ArcelorMittal, Zapp Precision Metals, Schmidt + Clemens and Dörrenberg Edelstahl.  The FCO's press release also confirms that fines have been imposed on ten individuals, as well as the trade association Edelstahl-Vereinigung. The FCO has reported that trade associations and, in particular, Edelstahl-Vereinigung e.V. "played a decisive role in the agreements."

Austrian steel maker Vestalpine has escaped the fines as it blew the whistle on the cartel. Investigations into four other companies and another trade association are still ongoing, the FCO has reported. 

The products covered by the agreements are long steel products, which are used in many industries such as the automotive, construction, manufacturing, household appliances, packaging and aviation industries. The particular products are engineering steel, tool steel and high-speed steel as well as stainless steel (i.e. rust, acid and heat-resistant steel).

The specialty steel products were usually sold based on a price model which essentially consists of the base price and surcharges for certain inputs, especially scrap and alloys.  The companies jointly agreed on and implemented a uniform method of calculating scrap and alloy surcharges for steel products across the sector and agreed that the surcharges be passed on to customers on a 1:1 basis.

Customers who bought the products from cartel members during the period of the cartel (2004 to 2015) are likely to seek to claim damages from cartel members. Since the final decisions of the FCO are binding for all courts in the EU, claimants will not have to prove that there was a cartel.