Assessment of damages in the district heating pipe cartel

The pre-insulated pipe cartel was established 1990 in Denmark, was extended to Italy and Germany during 1991 and re-organised in 1994 to cover the entire common market. Cartel members engaged in market sharing, price setting, bid rigging, coordinated predation and delaying of innovation. The European Commission fined the cartel in 1998. In 2005 four Danish municipalities successfully sued three cartel members and received large damage payments. The paper reviews the EU case, explains the economics of cartels, describes different approaches to determining damages and shows how this was done in practice.