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French Government Fines Rolex $100 Million For Thwarting Online Watch Sales December 22, 2023 (1 comment)
Paris, France--Rolex was fined about $100 million by France’s antitrust agency for pursuing an illegal decade-long crackdown on distributors selling the Swiss firm’s luxury watches online, Bloomberg News reports.
The Autorite de la Concurrence, France’s competition regulator, rejected arguments from Rolex’s French unit that an online ban “was justified by the need to combat counterfeiting and parallel trade,” Bloomber News reports.
[Rolex headquarters in Geneva. Photo source: Rolex]
The violations are “serious, as they amount to closing a marketing channel, to the detriment of consumers and retailers, when the online distribution of luxury products, including watches, has been booming over the past 15 years,” the regulator reportedly said in a statement.
The fine comes with an order for the French unit to inform its retailers of the decision and to publish a summary of it on its website within two months and for seven consecutive days. The decision follows industry complaints and raids by the authority.
Read the report here.