STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Norway’s top three food retailers face a combined 4.9 billion Norwegian crowns ($459 million) in fines for breaching antitrust regulations, less than a quarter of the originally proposed penalty, the country’s competition authority said on Wednesday.
In 2020, the Norwegian Competition Authority said the three firms faced fines totalling a record 21 billion crowns, accusing them of cooperating in ways that may have inflated prices.
The fines have been reduced as the case was no longer considered an intentional breach of the competition act, among other things, the authority said in a statement on Wednesday.
The case centred on how Norgesgruppen, Rema and Coop used so-called price hunters to survey rivals’ stores and allowed those surveyors access to their own outlets.
While the companies said the practice boosted competition, the regulator said it instead probably stifled competition.
The authority was still assessing the “anti-competitive effects” of the cooperation, it said.
Top retailer Norgesgruppen now faces a fine of 2.3 billion crowns, down from 8.8 billion previously. Rema and Coop could both be fined 1.3 billion, after earlier facing penalties of 7.4 billion and 4.8 billion respectively.
“We continue to completely disagree with the Competition Authority’s allegations of competition rule violations,” Coop said in a statement.
Norgesgruppen also rejected claims of wrongdoing, and said it was surprised the case had not been dropped altogether.
Rema did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It has previously denied any wrongdoing.
The decision to fine the three groups is preliminary, in accordance with the watchdog’s practice, allowing each company to respond to the changes by May 2.
The retailers can also appeal against any fines in court.
($1 = 10.6708 Norwegian crowns)
(Reporting by Greta Rosen Fondahn; Editing by Terje Solsvik and Mark Potter)
