MADRID – A government watchdog agency announces €9 million ($9.5 million) in fines against 46 car dealers accused of price-fixing and against a market-research company hired to employ so-called secret shoppers to ensure compliance.
The National Commission for Markets and Competition says the retailers restricted competition in Madrid and the Galicia region in Northwest Spain between 2007 and June 2013, when it launched an investigation.
Fines are being levied against 24 Opel dealers, 12 Hyundai dealers and 10 Toyota dealers. The commission says the price-fixing agreements only involved certain models of vehicles including the Hyundai ix35, Toyota Prius and Opel Astra.
The Spanish auto dealers group (FACONAUTO) denies wrongdoing and says it will appeal the sanctions, which it says were imposed without evidence. It claims the country’s car market is competitive, citing an 8.5% drop in prices in the past three years.
In addition to the dealers, the commission is fining ANT Servicalidad, which used secret shoppers
to seek discounts and incentives at individual dealerships. They then reported the offers back to the research firm, which determined whether the dealers were upholding the price-fixing agreements.
Fines against Opel dealers total nearly €5.4 million ($5.7 million), with the largest individual penalty levied against the Seligrat Automocion dealer group (€989,541 [$1.05 million]). Fines against the Hyundai dealers total €2 million ($2.1 million) and against the Toyota dealers, €1.76 million ($1.86 million).
ANT Servicalidad is fined only about €43,500 ($46,000) despite helping launch the scheme the year before the onset of the global financial crisis. Later ousted by the cartel, the government investigation shows, the research firm returned to the dealers in 2012 and offered its services “to redirect the price war generated by the crisis to a ‘no-price-war’ situation with homogeneous and controlled discounts and incentives, increasing the trade margins per vehicle sold.”
In its response to investigators’ findings, FACONAUTO contends not only that competition has forced car prices down to the lowest level within the European Union, but that small and medium-sized dealerships’ sales have fallen more than 60% since 2007 and they continue to lose money.
The sanctions, if upheld, could cause dealers to lose 100,000 sales this year, the industry group claims.
The competition commission is expected to announce within days a second round of fines against 119 dealers, including 102 Volkswagen-Audi-SEAT retailers as well as those from Nissan (7), Land Rover (6) and Volvo (4).
