US$56m fine for Mercedes-Benz
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, April 24, 2015
China has ordered Mercedes-Benz to pay 350 million yuan (US$56.45 million) and its dealerships 7.87 million yuan in fines for manipulating prices in the eastern Jiangsu Province.
The provincial price bureau said yesterday that they had formed a price alliance from January 2013 to July 2014 to impose a monopoly that restrained market competition.
An agreement was reached to impose a downward limit on the price of E Class and S Class models as well as some spare parts. Mercedes-Benz tightened its dealership management with warnings and punishment for those who disobeyed orders, the bureau said.
Mercedes-Benz said it accepted the bureau's punishment and it would be taking steps to prevent such practices in the future.
"Mercedes-Benz was taking a leading position in the formation of the monopoly agreement," the bureau said in a statement yesterday.
The carmaker's penalty was based on 7 percent of its sales revenue last year while a 1 percent fine applied to the dealerships involved.
An anti-trust drive initiated by the National Development and Reform Commission last July has led to several carmakers being punished.
So far, the fine imposed on Mercedes-Benz is the biggest for a single car brand in China.
Last September, Audi was fined 248.58 million yuan and its dealerships 29.96 million yuan while Chrysler was fined 31.68 million yuan and its dealerships 2.14 million yuan for their involvement in anti-competition practices.
Last August, eight Japanese auto parts companies and four Japanese bearing makers were found to have negotiated price agreements for products destined for China, which included coordinated price increases.
Fines in these cases amounted to around 1.2 billion yuan.
The same month, four BMW dealerships in central China's Hubei Province were found guilty of price fraud by charging fees for pre-delivery inspections.
Each of the four sales outlets was fined between 150,000 yuan and 937,900 yuan.
A few weeks later, 11 BMW dealerships in Shanghai promised to stop charging pre-delivery inspection fees.
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