I thought this might be of interest to readers and/or to pass on to clients.  The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) just published a case study of their investigation of a real estate against cartel in the UK (here).   Below are the lessons learned section of the study:

What are the lessons?

• Be careful when talking business with your competitors – make sure you don’t agree not to compete with each other.

• Be especially wary of any conversations about pricing, or about a shared approach to pricing. Each business must set and decide its prices independently.

• Competition law applies to small businesses as well as large ones. The estate agents in this case were small local or regional businesses.

• The consequences of breaking competition law can be severe; fines can be as much as 10% of a business’ global turnover and a director can be banned from being a director of a company, or being involved in the promotion, formation or management of one, for up to 15 years. In the most serious cases, individuals can go to prison for up to 5 years. [In the United States the maximum prison sentence is 10 years.]

• Competition law applies to all industries and the CMA will take action against those breaking the law.

• The Somerset estate agents’ cartel is the second recent enforcement case the CMA has taken in the property sector. The CMA remains committed to tackling illegal anti-competitive conduct in the sector.

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Thanks for reading.