Wal-Mart's Asda Unit Loses U.K. Ruling Over Capping Tobacco Antitrust Fine

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s Asda unit, the U.K.’s second-biggest supermarket chain, lost a court ruling on its request to block a regulator from raising a 14.1 million- pound ($21.7 million) fine in a tobacco price-fixing case.

The Competition Appeal Tribunal in London today rejected Asda’s request to prevent the Office of Fair Trading from raising the fine. The OFT hasn’t said when it will increase the fine, or by how much.

“Asda agreed not to contest the allegations of infringement made by the OFT in return for a reduction in the fine that the OFT would otherwise have imposed,” Vivien Rose, a chairwoman at the tribunal, said in the ruling.

Asda, based in Leeds, England, is among 10 retailers and two tobacco companies, Imperial Tobacco Group Plc and Gallaher Group Ltd., that in April were fined 225 million pounds for coordinating cigarette prices between 2001 and 2003.

“When we agreed to settle the case with the OFT, we did not have access to all of the evidence or the OFT’s final reasoning,” Asda spokeswoman Jo Newbould said today in a statement. “Now that we have had time to consider properly their findings, we believe the OFT has got it wrong.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Larson in London at elarson4@bloomberg.net.

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