Tesco will pay a reduced £6.5 million fine for its part in a dairy price fixing scandal following an appeal ruling that ends a more than decade-long investigation.
The penalty is substantially less than the initial £10m fine imposed on the retailer after it won a partial victory against the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).
The Competition Appeal Tribunal (Cat) decided in December to overturn more than half of the findings by the OFT that Tesco colluded with other retailers and suppliers to fix cheese prices.
It said at the end of last year that there was “insufficient evidence” that Tesco was involved in a concerted effort to rig cheese prices in 2003.
But the appeal tribunal upheld the OFT’s conclusion that Tesco was guilty of communicating its pricing to rival retailers through a supplier three times in 2002.
The latest hearing by the Cat brings to a close a long-running OFT probe that has seen supermarkets and dairy processors pay £39m collectively in fines.
The OFT estimated that the collusion led to shoppers paying 2p more for a litre of milk and 2p more for 100g of cheese, although Tesco has always denied collusion.
