France's Competition Authority has imposed a record €575 million ($776 million) in fines on 11 steel makers and brokers, including French subsidiaries of the world's leading steel company ArcelorMittal which are active in steel distribution.
Three ArcelorMittal units have been fined €301.78 million ($414,61 million) in total for price fixing, while ArcelorMittal steel trading subsidiary PUM Service Acier has received the largest fine, i.e. of €288 million ($396 million).
The fines have resulted from an investigation started in 2004, by the DGCCRF (Direction Générale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation et de la Répression des Fraudes), in order to prevent cartels which had been in existance for at least five years in the steel sector, between 1999 and 2004. The French competition authority stated that the cartel was between steel brokers and sellers who effectively raised prices by about 10 percent for products like girders, tubes and laminated steel sheets.
According to the ArcelorMittal statement on this issue, the company intends to make an appeal. "ArcelorMittal takes matters of this nature extremely seriously and has a rigorous global compliance program in place to combat anticompetitive practices. At this time the company has no further comment to make on the situation," the statement said.
After ArcelorMittal, KDI, a subsidiary of the German group Kloeckner, received the next largest fine, of €169.3 million ($232.91 million).