A third company has proposed to bring legal action on behalf of truck buyers against the five manufacturers that operated in a cartel.
Litigation finance group Bentham Europe is hoping to prepare a case against MAN, Iveco, Daf, Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler and Volvo and Renault parent Volvo Group, which were fined €2.9bn (£2.5bn) for colluding on the factory list pricing of trucks between 1997 and 2011.
Chief investment officer Jeremy Marshall told CM it is hoping to fund legal action on behalf of some of the estimated 600,000 eligible companies across Europe, but will not necessarily focus on the UK market.
Marshall estimated that around 10 million trucks were sold in the EU during the period the cartel was operating, with buyers being overcharged by around €10,500 per truck.
“Bentham is determined to bring the opportunity to recover the overcharges to the attention of as many truck purchasers as it can and enable these victims of the cartel collectively to seek redress,” he said.
Both the RHA and London-based competition law firm Hausfeld have also stated their intention to bring a claim against the manufacturers.
