The UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has broken up a secret cartel between two suppliers of laboratory filtration equipment.
Gelman Sciences of Northampton and Sartorius of Epsom were accused by the OFT of colluding on pricing and sharing information about prices charged or quoted in order to stop a price war.
In an undefended hearing, the court accepted undertakings from both companies not to give effect to the agreement, or similar agreements, and not to enforce any other registrable agreement which has not been submitted to the Office of Fair Trading in time.
The two companies’ managers had agreed a limit on the extent to which they would each try to undercut the prices at which the other supplied its existing customers.