The company alleges (PDF) that the nine companies engage in "unlawful per se horizontal market division, customer allocation, and price fixing agreements" with its competitors in the market for bank rate websites throughout the United States.
Until end of 2010, drug prices in Germany were not regulated but were indirectly influenced by the reimbursement system (e.g. fixed pricing, agreements on discounts).
Economists generally agree that horizontal price-fixing agreements are bad for consumers.
Horizontal price-fixing agreements are also illegal under European Union (EU) competition law, where they are similarly subject to so-called hard-core restrictions.
The inquiry into price-fixing agreements, which began as early as January 2000, has involved authorities worldwide and resulted in more than $1.6 billion in fines since 2011.
"The new regulation cuts back this bureaucracy and allows the commission to focus its attention on these cartel and price-fixing agreements that are truly harmful to competition," said Mario Monti, the European Union's competition commissioner.
In addition, there have been some concerns about the per se prohibition of horizontal price-fixing agreements in contexts in which it is difficult for consumers to judge the quality of goods or services on their own.
"Such maximum price-fixing agreements create the risk that the maximum prices will become minimum or uniform prices," the department said in a business review letter signed Oct. 1, 1993, by Anne K. Bingaman, then the assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division.
Examples of horizontal price-fixing agreements include agreements to adhere to a price schedule or range; to set minimum or maximum prices; to advertise prices cooperatively or to restrict price advertising; to standardize terms of sale such as credits, markups, trade-ins, rebates, or discounts; and to standardize the package of goods and services included in a given price.
After a few days of silence we were informed by the agent that the landlord insisted that we had to have an fixed tenancy agreement as it was a condition of the landlord's mortgage.
