VW’s Scania Loses Fight Over $994 Million EU Antitrust Fine

(Bloomberg) -- Volkswagen AG's Scania unit lost its fight against a 880.5 million-euro ($994 million) fine from European Union regulators for fixing truck prices.

The EU General Court in Luxembourg upheld the European Commission's 2017 decision in a ruling on Wednesday. The judgment can be appealed one more time to the bloc's top court.

Scania was fined for colluding over 14 years with five other truck manufacturers on truck pricing and on how to pass on the costs of new technologies to meet stricter emission rules, the European Commission said at the time. The penalty is the EU's second-highest ever for one company in a price-fixing case, topped only by a 1.01 billion-euro penalty for Daimler AG in the same cartel.

While Scania refused to settle and was eventually fined, a year earlier Daimler, Paccar Inc.'s DAF and other truckmakers agreed to pay the commission a record total of 2.93 billion euros.

The truck cartel members fixed factory prices for trucks between 1997 and 2011 and also coordinated when producers would introduce technology to curb emissions from trucks and how they'd pass on the costs of that technology to customers, the EU said at the time. 

The case is: T-799/17, Scania v. Commission.

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