Q&A: Cartel enforcement

August 2025  |  SPECIAL REPORT: COMPETITION & ANTITRUST

Financier Worldwide Magazine

August 2025 Issue

FW discusses cartel enforcement with Matthew Hall at McGuire Woods.

FW: Could you provide an overview of recent developments in cartel enforcement? How would you characterise the current state of enforcement activities?

Hall: Regulators continue aggressively to enforce against cartels. Dawn raids are again common after the COVID-19 pandemic lull and domestic premises will increasingly be targeted in particular due to increased remote working. Regulators are taking active steps to identify cases so as to reduce reliance on leniency, or whistleblowing, applications, which, although they seem somewhat to be on the increase again, have reduced in recent years due to concerns about private damages litigation resulting from the infringement decisions that often follow these applications. Regulators have expanded their own proactive detection efforts by relying on public data to identify anomalies in pricing using artificial intelligence (AI) tools, as well as increasing resources. In the UK, the cash reward for individuals providing information has been increased to up to £250,000. Measures also include encouraging informal and hypothetical leniency applications and introducing easier whistleblowing tools. In addition to traditional cartels, such as price fixing on sales of products to customers, regulators have expanded and increased enforcement into less traditional areas, such as collusion in labour markets concerning wages and no-poach, and issues affecting competition on sustainability issues and buyer cartels. Regulators also continue to be concerned about coordination through use of technology, such as pricing algorithms and indirect coordination, including through third parties and platforms.

FW: How are digital evidence and advanced technologies shaping cartel investigations? Have you observed any recent shifts in procedural trends?

Hall: Regulators are using technology to carry out their own monitoring and screening in order to identify possible concerns and start investigations. During investigations, technology, including AI and forensic capabilities, is used by regulators to review documents and data in order to identify possible issues. Dawn raids focus on collection of digital data from any source and device, and companies need to be ready for that. This means carrying out digital mapping exercises in advance so that all locations of data are known and accessible, including remote, cloud and third-party servers, all of which regulators will expect to access. It also means educating employees that devices used for business purposes, including personal devices and bring your own devices (BYOD), can and will be reviewed, and this means some personal data may inevitably be caught. This also includes messaging apps such as WhatsApp. Companies and individuals are under obligations not to destroy or delete messages, even ephemeral messages, and regulators are very concerned about this.

FW: What new tools are government authorities using to detect and prosecute cartel violations? How significant is cross-border collaboration in these enforcement efforts?

Hall: Regulators are using AI and machine learning (ML) tools to identify concerns and start ex officio investigations, as well as analyse seized data and enrich insights from that process. There is increased information sharing between and parallel investigations by regulators, as indicated by the number of parallel and joint raids over the past few years, including in ex officio investigations. There are open lines of communication between regulators and they are keen to work together, including by coordinating the timing of their investigations. Two examples are the European Union (EU) and UK raids starting the end of life vehicles (ELV) investigations in March 2022 and coordination between US, EU, Swiss and UK authorities on the fragrance investigation.

“Without a requirement of law there is no exemption for cartel activity that is just encouraged by a regulator or government. There will continue to be difficulties in distinguishing between legitimate cooperation on procurement and a purchasing cartel.”
— Matthew Hall

FW: To what extent are investigative authorities reviewing and revising their leniency programmes?

Hall: No reviews and revisions are taking place at EU level. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has just finished a consultation on proposed changes to the relevant guidance. The most significant are updates to what is meant by ‘cartel activity’. This includes changing the definition so that it expressly includes fixing of purchase prices. Additionally, the list of examples of cartel activity now includes anti-competitive exchanges of certain types of information, no-poach arrangements, pay for delay arrangements, and restrictions of incentives to innovate in order to meet or exceed sustainability goals, as well as purchase price fixing. Also important is provision for the use of an online application process as opposed to the current oral process, which would bring the UK into line with the EU.

FW: Could you highlight any recent cartel investigations that have caught your attention? How might the outcome of these cases impact future activities?

Hall: The EU fine imposed on Delivery Hero and Glovo in 2025 is very important, as this is the first time the European Commission found a cartel in a labour market and the first time it sanctioned the anti-competitive use of a minority share in a competing business. This continues a trend of labour market investigations in numerous other jurisdictions worldwide relating in particular to no-poach arrangements and wage fixing and related activities, including by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which fined various sports broadcast and production companies for colluding on rates of pay for freelancers. Another recent example is the French regulator’s – Autorité de la concurrence – 2025 fine for no-poach agreements in the engineering, technology consulting and IT services sectors. The ELV cartels are also important as they show a focus on sustainability issues.

FW: What essential advice would you give companies to manage and mitigate the risk of violating global anti-cartel laws?

Hall: Appropriate compliance programmes and training, with regular reminders and ways to engage, such as gamification of training, are crucial. Tying remuneration to compliance is effective. Programmes need to cover as appropriate the various types of risk that are not immediately obvious, such as labour market collusion, information exchange, conduct that hampers technical innovation, and pricing algorithms. Training and programmes should ideally be designed for specific internal audiences and not general. Companies need to understand their cooperation and document preservation obligations when investigated, including on a dawn raid. Companies should prepare by understanding their entire IT arrangements and how employees use devices, including messaging apps. Internal policies such as on BYOD need to be updated.

FW: How do you see cartel enforcement evolving in the coming months and years? What are likely to be the key enforcement priorities for authorities?

Hall: There will be an ever-increasing focus on the use of technology to detect potential infringements and review material. Key enforcement priorities will continue to include labour markets and environmental sustainability issues, plus coordination and information sharing via algorithms and platforms and restrictions on innovation competition. Regulators will also continue to focus on obstruction issues, including failure to provide data and information and destruction of documents. We will also likely see remote and virtual raids in which the regulator requires remote access to databases and does not come to the premises, plus more home raids. Regulators will also continue to source leads in a range of ways, including using revised and simpler whistleblowing tools, from merger reviews, from market studies, through web scraping and data collection using AI and ML, as well as by monitoring industries, trends and announcements. In the UK, the CMA will continue to focus on director disqualification as a tool to punish individuals for involvement in cartel activity. It sees this as a key issue to show there needs to be accountability for compliance from the top – noting that the criminal ‘cartel offence’ in theory available against individuals in the UK is in practice not used. A continuing trend is enforcement against third parties involved in or facilitating cartels, including trade associations, consultancies and even law firms, if relevant. Companies will need to be wary of cooperating just because the government wants it or encourages it – for example, on environmental, social and governance issues, with the ‘voluntary’ Mansion House Compact between asset managers on investment decisions in the UK an example. Without a requirement of law there is no exemption for cartel activity that is just encouraged by a regulator or government. There will continue to be difficulties in distinguishing between legitimate cooperation on procurement and a purchasing cartel. There will continue to be significant private enforcement, including both follow-on claims and standalone claims, as well as collective claims. Claimants will continue to push the boundaries on the substantive and procedural aspects of competition law claims. Companies should expect a private claim whenever there is a regulatory infringement decision or even an announced investigation. 

 

Matthew Hall is a partner at McGuireWoods London LLP. He specialises in all aspects of EU and UK competition and antitrust law, including merger control, strategic business advice, competition risk management, cartel and abuse of dominance investigations, market and sector investigations, state aid and subsidies, and competition litigation. He is co-host of the ABA Antitrust Law Section’s ‘Our Curious Amalgam’ podcast series. He can be contacted on +44 (0)20 7632 1611or by email: mhall@mcguirewoods.com.

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THE RESPONDENT

Matthew Hall

McGuireWoods London LLP

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