Record Fine Shatters Car Glass Producers

The European Commission has imposed a record fine of over €1.3 billion on four car glass producers for their role in a market sharing cartel. One of the companies involved, Saint-Gobain, was fined €896 million – this is the largest cartel fine ever imposed by the Commission on an individual company and smashes its previous record penalty.

The Commission found that, between 1998 and 2003, Asahi, Pilkington and Saint-Gobain (Europe's three major players in this industry) had discussed prices, shared markets, allocated customers and exchanged commercially sensitive information - each of these in itself represents a very serious breach of competition law. The fourth producer, Soliver, also took part in some of the illicit contacts.