Answered step by step
Verified Expert Solution
Question
1 Approved Answer
Case 1 British Dairies Milk the Customers' Wallets In late 2007, British fans of milk and cheese got some bad news: their supermarkets and milk
Case 1 British Dairies Milk the Customers' Wallets In late 2007, British fans of milk and cheese got some bad news: their supermarkets and milk suppliers had been illegally rigging the prices of dairy products since 2002. The Office of Fair Trade learned that many of the U.K.'s largest supermarket chains had been colluding to raise the prices of dairy products, and their milk distributors, namely Dairy Crest and Robert Wiseman Dairies, had been the go-betweens for the ostensibly secret pricing decisions. The anti-competitive behavior supposedly cost customers close to 270 million pounds over the course of the scam, and the companies involved faced fines that maxed out at a combined 116 million pounds. Case 2 Roche Doesn't Learn Its Lesson In 1973, Stanley Adams was an executive at the Swiss pharmaceutical firm Hoffman-LaRoche when he uncovered some rather incriminating documents about his employer. It turned out that the company was part of a price-fixing scam in the international market for vitamins. Adams decided to pass his findings on to the European Economic Commission in a confidential memo detailing how Roche manipulated the bulk vitamin market. Eventually Adams got out of jail, and Roche somehow managed to avoid taking a hard hit for its role in the price fixing. Getting off the hook for this offense may have just made the company more brazen, though. From 1990 to 1999, it engaged in an illegal price-fixing cartel for vitamins again, and this time Roche and its co-conspirators got nabbed. In 1999, the company pled guilty to price fixing in the U.S. and paid a $500 million fine. Within two years, the European Union had also taken Roche to task for its nefarious pricing and fined the company to the tune of 462 million euros. Analyse the similarities in detail between these two cases and how the government responses varied
Step by Step Solution
There are 3 Steps involved in it
Step: 1
Get Instant Access to Expert-Tailored Solutions
See step-by-step solutions with expert insights and AI powered tools for academic success
Step: 2
Step: 3
Ace Your Homework with AI
Get the answers you need in no time with our AI-driven, step-by-step assistance
Get Started