Competition record
Schindler
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Schindler is the Swiss elevator and escalator company fined in the 2007 European cartel. The Commission found market division and bid rigging and imposed about €992 million in total, with the leniency reduction going to Kone.
Overview
Schindler is a Swiss company that installs elevators and escalators and keeps them running. In much of Europe it is one of a few firms a developer will invite to bid on a building. The bid is for the machine. The longer contract is the maintenance, which stays with the installer because the parts and the call-out network are theirs.
The 2007 Commission decision fined Schindler with Otis, Kone, and Thyssenkrupp. About €992 million is the total. The conduct was dividing markets and rigging bids: agreeing which firm would take a country or a customer, and arranging the other bids around that choice. Kone received the leniency reduction. Schindler was fined as a participant in the same cartel.
Schindler's own fine is not stated here. What is stated is the Swiss firm's place in a European installation cartel, and the building owner who thought a closed tender had produced an independent low bid.
Competition footprint
National markets for new lifts were divided, so a Schindler bid in one country was not always a real contest with Otis or Kone.
Bid rigging on projects covered both elevators and escalators.
The leniency reduction went to Kone. The cartel total in 2007 is about €992 million.
Consumer & business angle
Architects and developers specifying a Schindler lift were buying a twenty-year service relationship as well as a hoist.
Public buildings, housing blocks, and stations pay maintenance out of budgets that never see the original bid rotation.
What to watch
- National damages suits that use the 2007 decision against Schindler maintenance portfolios.
- Tender designs that stop the same four manufacturers from rotating winners on public buildings.
Markets
elevators · escalators · lift maintenance
Also known as: schindler group, schindler elevator