Restaurant Voucher Cartel France

In December 2019, the French Competition Authority (FCA) fined the four big providers of meal vouchers for a total of nearly 415 M€, for infringing Article 101 TFEU, arguing that the companies Edenred, Up, Natixis and Sodexo restricted competition by exchanging commercially sensitive information as well as by locking the highly concentrated market for meal vouchers.

Compass Lexecon provided economic analysis to meal voucher issuers during the proceedings in front of the FCA. We examined the economic foundations of the claims laid out by the FCA in its Statement of Objections and submitted several expert reports on these claims, one of which with an econometric analysis of the hypothetical effects of the information exchanges upon commissions charged to firms using meal vouchers.

Our teams were led by David Sevy, Damien Neven, and Valerie Meunier and included Patricia Lorenzo, Jérémiah Juts and Thibauit de Bernard.