Pharmaceutical Vitamin Price Fixing Exposed

Monday, October 14th 2002

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The growing consumer interest in vitamin supplements has attracted the pharmaceutical marketing and manufacturing industry. Products from many of these companies have been released onto the wider world market without the same philosophy once associated with nutritional companies. This surfaced recently when the European Competition Union uncovered illegal price fixing by some of the worlds largest pharmaceutical companies.

These companies have been collectively fined $855 million euros for operating an illegal price fixing cartel for vitamins. This is the largest fine the European Commission has ever imposed.

The European Union's commissioner Mr Mario Monti stated in his November 2001 summary, that this was one of the most serious cases the Union had ever investigated. He described how senior executives in 13 pharmaceutical and companies had cynically collaborated to ensure that consumers paid over the odds for vitamins used on their own and in other products such as cereals,. biscuits, drinks, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.

These companies met regularly each month to collude on prices, exchange sales figures and coordinate price increases.

The companies were fined based on the supply of vitamins A, B, C, D3, E and Beta Carotene between 1990 and 1998. The Commission also found that many of these companies had already been implicated and fined in the USA.

In an interview, Mr Monti agreed that the 13 firms involved were in effect just one big global monopoly that could be dubbed 'Vitamins Inc.'

In March 2001, three large companies were fined a record $26 million in the Australian Federal Court for anti-competitive practices in respect of a worldwide fixing conspiracy.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald September 2002

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