EU competition regulators have raided several car parts manufacturing firms that produce vehicle exhaust systems, one of the those victims is a well known French firm Faurecia, Germany’s Eberspaecher Group and TenneCo of the United States, as part of a extensive investigate into alleged price deception in the automotive spare parts industry.
Multi-dollar fines were imposed on several car parts manufacturers in last few years by the regulators in USA, Japan, Europe and Canada for fixing prices of various products including seatbelts, radiators, windscreen wipers and air conditioning systems etc. The European Commission said that these companies or manufacturers who are targeted for investigation may also have their influence in the market and have operated a lobby but in order to obey their policy, they kept the places and countries secret where these raids took place. However, Faurecia, has confirmed the raid, remember that this manufacturer is 52-percent owned by French carmaker Peugeot Citroen.
“The European Commission antitrust authorities have launched investigations into suppliers of emission control systems,” the company said. “Faurecia is fully collaborating and cooperating with the EU authorities.”
Meanwhile TenneCo said “the EU regulator raided its Edenkoben administrative facility in Germany.” This company had also received an associated subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice.
“The TenneCo management is fully cooperating with the authorities,” TenneCo said.
Eberspaecher, is another auto parts manufacturer and is based in Esslingen. This company has around 7,300 employees and yearly sales of more than 2.8 billion Euros as of only 2012. They also confirmed the EU raids. A spokesperson for Belgian car parts supplier Bosal has denied the raid from EU authorities and said his company was not caught up for the investigation. The Commission investigating suspected cartels has the authority of imposing fine on the companies equal to 10 per cent of their global sales for violating EU. Earlier this month, one German company and three Japanese companies were fined a total of 953.3 million Euros for operating a lobby for ball bearings used in cars and trucks.
