65 CARTEL IN THE HAM AND COLD MEATS SECTOR Fines against 12 manufacturers Dry-cured and cooked ham, sausages, chorizo... These are everyday consumer products that are very popular with the French and have been the subject of a wide-ranging anticompetitive agreement for many years. The Autorité handed down fines of €93 million on cold meat manufacturers who were coordinating to buy raw materials from slaughterhouses at lower prices and/or agreed on price increases to be charged to mass-market retailers for their own brands or "economy" brands. A look back at a case that was unprecedented in a variety of ways. CARTELS THAT INVOLVED A united front against BOTH "UPSTREAM" AND A brief overview of slaughterhouses to negotiate a far-reaching case the purchase prices of raw "DOWNSTREAM" • Unannounced inspections on 13 companies materials The anticompetitive agreement practices• A significant number ofHam with the flank removed is one of the adopted by the cold meat manufacturersrequests for information sentcategories of raw material from pigs that is related both to the upstream market, i.e.,• A large number of hearingspurchased by cold meat processors to pro- relations between the manufacturers and• Written expertise duce cooked hams after processing. the slaughterhouses that supplied the raw• More than 45,000 material, and to the downstream market,classification marks added toBetween 2011 and 2013, four of the big- the file and analysed by the i.e., their relations with their clients in theinvestigation services.gest groups in the sector, i.e., the groups mass retail distribution sector. Campofrio ( which markets brands such as Aoste and Jean Caby) Fleury Michon, Finan- cière Turenne Lafayette (which owned the brands Paul Prédualt, Madrange, etc.) and Les Mousquetaires (which sells its own brand Monique Ranou), coordinated on the weekly price variation of “ham, flank remo- ved” with a view to showing a united front 13COMPANIES VISITED(DAWN RAIDS) in their dealings with slaughterhouses inorder to be able to better resist requestedprice increases or obtain price reductions.… ACTIVATING TRANSFORMATION