Coats and YKK Lose EU Court Challenges Over Antitrust Fines
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Coats Holdings Plc, the world’s biggest maker of industrial threads, and YKK Corp. lost court challenges against European Union antitrust fines for fixing the price of fasteners such as zippers, rivets and snaps.
The EU’s General Court backed the European Commission’s fines of 150 million euros ($187 million) for YKK, based in Tokyo, and 110 million euros for Coats in 2007 over cartels involving fasteners and related machinery, one of which ran for more than 21 years. The EU said at the time that the zipper market was worth about 400 million euros a year and the market for other metal fasteners was worth 200 million euros.