The Italian Competition Authority finds a cartel in the market for catering services on motorways

In the case I775, Proceduredi affidamento dei servizi ristoro su rete autostradale ASPI (ASPI), the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) found two major catering operators, My Chef and Chef Express, to have infringed Article 101 TFEU by coordinating their conducts with regard to a number of tender procedures organized to select the suppliers of catering services on the Italian motorway network.
The relevant market included the 16 contracts for the provision of catering services on the motorway network managed by ASPI and awarded to My Chef and Chef Express, 8 contracts were concluded with My Chef and the remaining 8 to Chef Express. The ICA took the view that the parties coordinated their conducts with the aim to allocate between themselves the contracts tendered out by ASPI through a sophisticated mechanism. To this end, the parties exploited the mathematical formula developed by the ASPI advisor, RB, to select the winning bids. The formula implied a global assessment of the technical and economic profiles of a given bid. The ICA noticed that, with regard to contracts awarded to one cartelist, the other submitted a weak technical bid and a strong economic bid. In this case, having in mind the functioning of the RB mathemical formula, the differences between the economic bids of the parties were minimal with the result that RB attached more weight to the technical bid. And in the ICA view the parties were aware of the fact that they were unlikely to be awarded a contract by bidding in this way. The ICA then believed that such conducts were part of a bid-rigging strategy planned well in advance of the tender procedures. The ICA findings were based on the parties' internal documents as well as on the observation of their market behaviours. In particular, the above reported combination of technical and economical bids could have not a rational justification but for the parties' collusion aimed at influencing the outcome of the competitive tender procedures.
The contested conducts amounted to a serious competition breach. Therefore, the ICA imposed a € 8.420.439 fine on Chef Express and a € 4.968.600 fine on My Chef. Consistently with the new ICA Guidelines on fining, the basic amount of the fines was calculated starting from the price of the winning bids.


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