Truck manufacturer Scania, a subsidiary of Volkswagen, was the final truck manufacturer to be fined recently for being part of a cartel with five other firms by the European Commission. The other truck-makers settled with the Commission last year.
The Commission found that Scania broke EU antitrust rules and imposed a fine of €880.52 million on the company. It colluded for 14 years with five other truck manufacturers on truck pricing and on passing on the costs of new technologies to meet stricter emission rules.
A settlement decision concerning the trucks cartel was reached with the European Commission and MAN, DAF, Daimler, Iveco and Volvo/Renault in July 2016. The Commission imposed a record fine of € 2.93 billion in total on the firms although MAN was not fined as it revealed the existence of the cartel to the Commission. Scania decided not to settle this cartel case with the Commission, and as a result, the investigation against Scania was carried out under the standard cartel procedure.
Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, said the fine on Scania marked “the end of our investigation into a very long lasting cartel – 14 years. This cartel affected very substantial numbers of road hauliers in Europe, since Scania and the other truck manufacturers in the cartel produce more than nine out of every 10 medium and heavy trucks sold in Europe. These trucks account for around three quarters of inland transport of goods in Europe and play a vital role in the European economy. Instead of colluding on pricing, the truck manufacturers should have been competing against each other – also on environmental improvements.”
Scania with the other firms was found to have co-ordinated prices at the “gross list” price level for medium and heavy trucks in the European Economic Area, which related to the factory price of trucks, as set by each manufacturer; colluded on the timing for the introduction of emission technologies for medium and heavy trucks to comply with the increasingly strict European emissions standards as well as in passing the costs for the emission technologies onto customers.
Analysis of Manifest’s Say on Sustainability database found that the grades on disclosure for the six truck manufacturers or their parent companies, that were part of the were all a grade B, apart from DAF – it is part of the US company Paccar and its low E grade reflects the low scoring that is achieved by US firms. All the companies had provided disclosure on regulatory and emissions standards compliance and all the firms apart from Paccar had discussed ethical business practices.
In respect of director remuneration the analysis found that at Renault in the FY 2016, the annual variable remuneration for the chairman and chief executive, Carlos Ghosn included a number of non-financial criteria, including ‘the quality of the CSR and environmental commitments weighted at 8%, and the ‘social impact in terms of diversity and health safety.
Meanwhile, at Daimler, an amount of up to 10% can be added or deducted from the annual bonus award of management board members depending on performance relating to non-financial targets. For 2015 these targets included the ‘development and permanent establishment of the corporate value of integrity, as well as diversity and the maintenance and enhancement of a high level of employee satisfaction and product quality’.
Last Updated: 19 October 2017