Cartels in construction – CMA message for business leaders

Lessons learnt from the CMA’s investigation into 3 major suppliers of groundworks products to the construction industry after they broke competition law.

In 2020, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) fined 2 businesses, Vp and MGF, a total of over £15 million for illegally sharing confidential information relating to current and future pricing and co-ordinating their commercial activities to reduce strategic uncertainty. A third business, Mabey, was also involved in the cartel for a relatively short period of time. Mabey avoided a fine by cooperating under the CMA’s leniency programme – they were the first to bring the illegal activity to the CMA’s attention and then fully co-operated with the CMA’s investigation.

Find out more about this case, how the law was broken, the benefits of cooperating with the CMA and more about the work the CMA does here.