The OFT fines six Construction Recruiters Almost £40m for price fixing and collective boycotting

Six construction recruitment companies have been fined £39.27m following a lengthy price fixing investigation by the OFT.

Eden Brown, Fusion People, CDI AndersElite, Hays Specialist Recruitment, Hill McGlynn and Associates, A Warwick Associates, Beresford Blake Thomas and Henry Recruitment were all judged to have breached the Competition Act 1998. Hays has taken the biggest hit being fined a whopping £30,359,129 for its part in the cartel.

These companies formed a price and quality cartel innocuously called the ‘Construction Recruitment Forum‘ which met 5 times between 2004 and 2006 to fix fee rates for Parc UK (an intermediary which had placed pressure on the allied recruiters’ margins) and a range of construction clients, the biggest victuims being Vinci, Taylor Woodrow and Atkins.

Click here for the full OFT press release.