Top toy retailers lose appeal against price fixing

Argos and Littlewoods, two of the UK's biggest toy retailers, have lost an appeal against an Office of Fair Trading (OFT) decision ruling that they were guilty of illegally fixing the price of certain toys.

The OFT welcomed yesterday's appeal judgment by the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) on the appeals brought by Argos and Littlewoods upholding the decision that the parties had illegally fixed prices of Hasbro games and toys.

OFT Chairman, John Vickers, said: "The CAT's judgment confirms the OFT's finding that Argos and Littlewoods had entered into price-fixing agreements along with Hasbro.

"Consumers suffered as the agreement kept prices artificially high. For example, with price-fixing a game of Monopoly cost £17.99 in the 2001 Spring/Summer catalogues of both companies. Thanks to competition law enforcement the game is now sold for £13.99 by Argos and £13.49 by Littlewoods".

The November 2003 decision by the OFT found that Hasbro, Argos and Littlewoods had entered into an agreement to fix the price of certain Hasbro toys and games, infringing the Competition Act 1998.

The two companies were ordered to pay fines of almost £22.7 million. Based on their respective turnovers the OFT imposed fines of almost £17.3 million on Argos and just under £5.4 million on Littlewoods.

Argos and Littlewoods appealed against both the findings of liability, on the issue of whether they were party to the price fixing agreements, and the levels of the fines.

Shopping group GUS who own Argos said that they were "disappointed" with the decision and are understood to be considering a further appeal.

According to the OFT as part of the investigation process Hasbro was let off paying a fine of almost £16 million, because the company "provided crucial evidence that initiated the investigation and cooperated fully".

(SP)