Author Definition
Definition
Bid rigging is a form of coordination between firms that may adversely affect the outcome of any sale or purchasing process in which bids are submitted. Such processes often, though not exclusively, relate to public procurement. Bid rigging may take a number of forms including: Bid suppression, where one or more parties agree not to bid; cover bidding, where parties agree to bid an artificially high price and bid rotation, where parties may agree to bid, or bid only at an artificially high price, in rotation according to the number or value of contracts.
Commentary
Bid rigging is an egregious form of anti-competitive behaviour, in part because it normally includes elements of other serious anti-competitive conduct such as price-fixing, the sharing of markets/customers and the exchange of confidential information between competitors. The gravity is exacerbated by the fact that it often involves public contracts with consequent loss to taxpayers and the undermining of important public purposes in areas such as defence and national infrastructure.
Bid rigging is an object infringement under Article 101(1) TFEU. In the PreInsulated Pipes case, for each supply contract the existing supplier would inform other suppliers participating in the arrangement of the price they intended to quote, the other suppliers would provide quotations at higher prices to ensure the maintenance of existing customer relationships. This was found by the European Commission to restrict competition by its very nature.
In the USA bid rigging is a per se violation of the US Sherman Act 1890 (USA v Javier Sanchez (2019)). ‘An agreement to interfere with competition for a transaction conducted by bid’ is a standalone infringement of the Sherman Act independent of any element of collusion which may also be present (United States v Guthrie (1993)).
Bid rigging is unlawful in all OECD member countries. In the EU, UK and Japan, 33% of competition authority fining decisions by volume concerned bid rigging activities; in the US the percentage was 46% and in South Korea it was 89% (Allen & Overy, Global Cartel Enforcement Report, 2020). Bid rigging will normally fall within the scope of national criminal prohibitions on anti-competitive practices (for example, the ‘cartel offence’ under section 188 of the UK Enterprise Act 2002). Even in jurisdictions where cartel activity is not criminalised, bid rigging may be a criminal offence. Ten jurisdictions can impose criminal sanctions exclusively for bid rigging conspiracies (OECD Working Party No 3, 2020). Bid rigging may be associated with other unlawful activities such as bribery, for example where a purchaser or an intermediary receives a payment to favour certain bidders or to ignore coordinated bidding practices.
Under EU law a joint bidding or consortia agreement is not unlawful if the parties to the agreement are not actual or potential competitors. It is not always easy to distinguish legitimate pro-competitive cooperation through teaming, joint bidding and subcontracting arrangements from unlawful bid rigging agreements.
How public authorities choose to combine or fragment potential projects may therefore impact whether potential bidders can bid individually or whether they need to combine with others. In the Danish Road Marking Consortium case (Dansk Vejmarkerings Konsortium) tenders were invited for road markings in three different districts. Two of the biggest undertakings submitted a joint bid covering three districts. Each party had what was needed to bid for one lot. The Danish Supreme Court upheld a decision by the Danish Competition Council which found that the parties to the consortium agreement were actual competitors since both had the financial resources, know-how and access to the requirements concerning machines and staff in order to bid for one lot. Consequently, their bidding arrangement, which involved price-fixing and contract sharing, was anti-competitive by object thereby infringing Article 101(1) TFEU. The contracting authority had encouraged bids for all three contracts collectively but did not make this a requirement. Presumably, if the public authority had not offered bidders the option of bidding for individual road marking projects, that is if the only contract available had been for the three combined projects, the outcome would have been different if the two tenderers did not have the resources to individually bid for the combined project. A more difficult question is if the two tenderers had anticipated bids from third parties for the combined contracts, and therefore taken the view that in practice the real competition was for the combined package, should their joint bidding agreement have been considered as an object infringement? Although they could in practice have bid for the individual contracts the economic and business reality in such circ*mstances was that the contest was for the combined project.
An agreement under which the bidders materially integrate their assets and resources in order to bid is, depending on circ*mstances. less likely to be considered to be anti-competitive by object than one where they simply allocate particular contracts or geographic areas between themselves though may still, on analysis, be anti-competitive by effect.
The impact of bid rigging on public authorities requires close cooperation between competition authorities and other public bodies to maximise the possibility of detection. In November 2019 the US Justice Department announced the formation of a Procurement Collusion Strike Force (PCSF), which now includes 29 public agencies, focusing on deterring, detecting, investigating and prosecuting antitrust crimes, including bid rigging, which undermine competition in government procurement, grant and program funding. In its first year the PCSF opened over two dozen grand jury investigations across the United States spanning the range of procurement collusion and fraud matters including domestic and international investigations into conduct affecting U.S. government procurement overseas.
On the one hand, the transparency of public bidding processes makes bid rigging easier because it is harder for parties to secretly ‘cheat’ on each other. On the other hand, detection is helped by the standardisation and digitisation of procurement processes which enable authorities to access transparent and comparable data. Many competition authorities produce guidelines to assist purchasing authorities in detecting bid rigging, for example warning buyers to look out for, changes in bid patterns, pricing irregularities and suspicious behaviour. Bid rigging screening tools may be helpful to complement other cartel detection methods (such as encouraging leniency, whistleblowing and intelligence functions). The UK CMA was one of the first competition authorities to develop a digital bid rigging screening tool in 2017. After encountering some initial difficulties when applying the tool it was withdrawn to allow further work on its effectiveness. Several other authorities have introduced, or are developing, bid rigging screening tools, for example, the Spanish competition authority has established a specialised new economic intelligence unit which conducts market screening activities and targets in particular potential bid rigging in public procurement activities.
The end date of a bid rigging scheme matters in order to determine the limitation period and the size of any penalty. In Kilpailu- ja kuluttajavirasto (2021), the European Court of Justice held that a bid rigging scheme ends on the date that the infringing company signs a contract with the party that put out the tender (not when tenders are submitted or when the price is paid in full). The financial consequences of such activity may have a longer term effect and might be taken into account in any damages action.
Case references
Kilpailu- ja kuluttajavirasto, C-450/19 (14 January 2021)
European Commission Decision 1999/60/EC of 21 October 1998 relating to a proceeding under Article 85 of the EEC Treaty (Case No IV/35.691/E-4 – Pre-Insulated Pipe Cartel) (OJ 1999 L 24/1)
United States v. Guthrie, 814 F. Supp. 942 (E.D. Wash. 1993)
Bibliography
Allen & Overy, Global Cartel Enforcement Report, February 2020.
Heidi Sander Løjmand, The Danish Supreme Court’s Ruling in the "Road Marking Case": The End of a Joint Bidding Era, How to Crack a Nut, 28 November 2019.
Justice Department Announces Procurement Collusion Strike Force: a Coordinated National Response to Combat Antitrust Crimes and Related Schemes in Government Procurement, Grant and Program Funding, 5 November 2019, Press Release Number: 19-1,189 and speech by Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim, “Here I Go Again”: New Developments for the Future of the Antitrust Division, 12 November 2020.
OECD, Ex officio cartel investigations and the use of screens to detect, 7 July 2014, DAF/COMP(2013)27 and see also: M Huber and D Imhof, Machine Learning with Screens for Detecting Bid-Rigging Cartels (2018) University of Fribourg Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences Working Paper Series No 494.
Institution Definition
Particular form of co-ordination between firms which can adversely affect the outcome of any sale or purchasing process in which bids are submitted. For example, firms may agree their bids in advance, deciding which firm will be the lowest bidder. Alternatively, they may agree not to bid or to rotate their bids in number or value of contracts. © European Commission
Bid rigging is a particular form of collusive price-fixing behaviour by which firms coordinate their bids on procurement or project contracts. There are two common forms of bid rigging. In the first, firms agree to submit common bids, thus eliminating price competition. In the second, firms agree on which firm will be the lowest bidder and rotate in such a way that each firm wins an agreed upon number or value of contracts.
Since most (but not all) contracts open to bidding involve governments, it is they who are most often the target of bid rigging. Bid rigging is one of the most widely prosecuted forms of collusion. © OECD
See also Cartel and Price-fixing agreement
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Competition Council Sanctioned 3 Companies For Rigging Public Tenders*
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Company Sentenced to Pay $6.5M Criminal Fine for Bid Rigging in Michigan Asphalt Industry*
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Pontiac-based(…)
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CCCS issues Proposed Infringement Decision for Bid-rigging Conduct in Procurement of Vulnerability Management Software Licences and Services*
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Unannounced inspections in the waste management sector*
Today, officials of the Hellenic Competition Commission (“HCC”) carried out unannounced inspections at the premises of companies active in the urban waste management sector in Crete. The HCC suspects that participants may have engaged in(…)
The CNMC has sanctioned seven food distributors for participating in three cartels that for years shared public contracts to supply food to hospitals (some of them military), nursing homes, prisons and Army facilities.
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The Belgian Competition Authority condemns the ANSUL/SOMATI FIE and SICLI groups for manipulating public procurement procedures in the fire protection sector*
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The Belgian Competition Authority fines Securitas, G4S and Seris over 47 million euros to sanction their participation in a complex cartel scheme in the private security sector*
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Articles
Interview conducted by Marquard Christen, Partner at CMS in Zurich and Mario Strebel, Partner at CORE in Zurich.
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Interview conducted by Ricardo Oliveira, Partner and head of the EU and Competition law practice, PLMJ, Lisbon.
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The lastest France AgriMer decision of 25th November 2020 marked a significant change in the practice of the French Competition Authority regarding the submission of tenders by companies belonging to the same group. While this decision is hardly surprising, given the particularly strict case law(…)
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Laurence Idot
Michel Debroux
Pierre de Montalembert
Philippe Legrez...
Frédéric Jenny
Catherine Prieto
Claude Lazarus
Books
Chapters
Variation in Bid-Rigging Cartels’ Overcharges
PART II Anticompetitive Practices 77Frédéric Jenny | Standing Up for Convergence and Relevance in Antitrust - Liber Amicorum – Volume II Variation in Bid-Rigging Cartels'Overcharges John M. Connor * and Dan P. Werner ** Purdue University | NERA Economic Consulting Abstract Empirical(…)
155 Bitten Thorgaard Sørensen Danish Competition and Consumer Authority Rasa Zaščiurinskaitė Bitten Thorgaard Sørensen is Deputy Director General at the Danish Competition and Consumer Authority. Prior to joining the Danish Competition and Consumer Authority as Deputy Director General in 2013,(…)
415Richard Whish QC (Hon) | Taking Competition Law Outside the Box - Liber Amicorum A Fine Mess: A Review ofIndia's Fining Jurisprudence andLearningsfrom the EU Avinash B. Amarnath *1 Law Chambers of Avinash Amarnath Abstract This paper critically analyses the principle of relevant turnover(…)
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Absolute territorial protection •Abuse of dominant position•Abuse of economic dependence•Access to the file•Actual competitor •Administered prices•Advisory committee•Agent•Agreement (notion)•AI Collusion (Algorithm)•AKZO Procedure •Amicus curiae•Ancillary restraints •Annulment•Anticompetitive Market Distortions•Anticompetitive object or effect•Anticompetitive practices•Antitrust•Applicable law•Arbitration•Article 11 letter •Artificial Intelligence •As-Efficient Competitor (AEC)
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Cartel •Clearance phase II (merger)•Collecting society •Collective dominance•Collective redress (class action)•Comity •Commission communication•Competence •Competition policy•Complaint •Compliance programme •Compulsory license•Concentration indexes•Concerted practices•Concession•Concurrent jurisdiction•Consortium •Consumer protection•Consumers’ associations•Control (change)•Control (notion)•Cooperation between competition authorities•Coordinated effects•Copyright•Corruption•Cost-based access•Cournot (Nash) equilibrium•Criminal sanctions•Cross subsidisation
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ECHR•Economic analysis•Economic efficiency•Economies of scale •Ecosystem Failures•Effect on trade between Member States•Effective judicial protection•Effects doctrine•EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) & Court •Environmental protection•Error costs•Essential facility•European Competition Network (ECN)•Excessive prices•Exchanges of information•Exclusionary practice •Exclusive distribution •Exclusive purchasing agreement•Exclusive right (Art. 106 TFEU)•Exclusivity clause•Exhaustion •Extra-territoriality
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Parallel imports (parallel trade)•Passing-on•Passive sales •Patents•Pay-for-delay•Periodic penalty payment•Potential competition •Predatory pricing•Preliminary ruling (Art. 267 TFUE) •Price discrimination •Price leadership•Price signalling•Price-fixing agreement•Prices•Principle of equal treatment•Principle of equivalence•Principle of proportionality•Privacy and data protection•Private enforcement•Privatization•Procedural autonomy•Professional association•Public procurement•Public undertaking
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Sunk Costs •Sector inquiry•Selective distribution •Self-Preference•Services of general economic interest •Single branding •Sole control•Specialization agreements •Spill-over effects •Standard-Essential Patent (SEP)•State action defence•State aid (compatibility)•State aid (existing aid) •State aid (notification)•State aid (notion)•State aid (recovery) •State aid (unlawful aid) •State measure •Statement of objections (SO) •Substitutability •Sustainability•Switching Costs
