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ARTICLE · 02 SEPTEMBER 2005

Cartel-Busters Hit The Roof Again

MacRoberts
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It's annoying when builders keep coming back to do more work on something you thought was finished. But it must be more than a little worrying for members of the construction industry when the Office of Fair Trading does the same to them.

United KingdomAntitrust/Competition Law
John Reid
John Reid
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It's annoying when builders keep coming back to do more work on something you thought was finished. But it must be more than a little worrying for members of the construction industry when the Office of Fair Trading does the same to them. For the second time in three months the OFT has targeted the industry in Scotland, fining five felt roofing contractors a total of GBP259,000 for bid rigging - and bringing its tally from these Scottish raids to over GBP490,000.

This underlines that, when the watchdog gets its teeth into an industry in which anti-competitive practices are perceived to be endemic, it will clamp on and keep shaking.

There is no doubt that this second haul of construction businesses will not be the last. What is more significant, however, is the extent to which the OFT's leniency programme can reduce the penalties for those caught in a cartel who assist the OFT with its enquiries. These total fines of GBP490,000 for instance were in fact reduced to an actual

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