The Competition Authority (AdC) announced on Monday the conviction of Bureau Van Dijk, a company that has been part of the Moody’s Group since 2017, and Informa D&B for “cartel related to the commercialization of the SABI commercial information database”.
The process began in May of last year after a request for leniency by the Moody’s Group. The AdC carried out raids in June and, in February of this year, Informa D&B also formalized its own leniency request. For having denounced the practice, Moody’s was exempt from a fine, under the AdC Clemency Program. Informa D&B was ordered to pay 353 thousand euros, which it has already paid. This amount was reduced because the company admitted the practice, collaborated with the AdC and abdicated the legal litigation.
At issue is Bureau Van Dijk’s SABI product, whose supporting data is provided by Informa D&B, says the AdC. This product “consists of an exclusive solution for financial analysis and strategic marketing for Portuguese and Spanish companies, which includes functionalities such as data analysis, presentation of results and applications of a commercial, marketing, economic, risk and transfer calculation nature” .
The contract between Informa D&B and Bureau Van Dijk states that they both had the right to sell the final product to customers under the joint name of the two companies. The agreement includes clauses that refer to “the coordination of sales forces, coordinated pricing policy, revenue sharing and a non-compete clause by which Informa D&B undertakes to discontinue a competing product.” That is where the problem arose, since this practice is prohibited by the Competition Law.
This law “expressly prohibits agreements between companies that, with the purpose of significantly restricting competition in all or part of the national market, have, by their very nature, a high potential in terms of negative effects, reducing the good consumers and harming the competitiveness of companies and the economy as a whole.
The information collected by the AdC showed that the practices began in April 2013 and lasted until June 2021, covering the entire national territory.
Source: Observadora
