Judges criticize the the European Commission’s failure to take into account the different structures of the companies it fined in 2007.
Guardian Industries Corp. won a ruling cutting an antitrust fine by 30 percent to 103.6 million EUR (129 million USD) as judges at the top European Union court criticized the way regulators calculated the penalty. Guardian Industries had initially lost an appeal at a lower EU court in 2012 to cut the EU’s original 148 million EUR penalty.
The court stated that the European Commission failed to take into account the different structures of the companies it fined in 2007. Excluding intra-group sales in setting the fines led to a bigger fine for Guardian Industries than for firms that sell a higher portion of products to their own units up the supply chain.
“Excluding a company’s internal sales would effectively favor vertically integrated companies by reducing their relative weight in the infringement to the detriment of other companies” such as Guardian Industries, the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg said in an e-mailed statement.
The commission, the EU’s antitrust watchdog, fined Guardian Industries and three competitors; Asahi, Pilkington and Saint-Gobain SA, a total of 486.9 million EUR for forming an illegal cartel in the market for flat glass.