Fourfront, Loop, Coriolis, ThirdWay and Oakley have agreed to pay £7m in fines after admitting their involvement in a cartel.

A Competition and Markets Authority investigation has revealed that each company admitted to breaking competition law at least once during the period of 2006-2017, in some cases on several occasions.

JLL brought information about the conduct to the CMA’s attention and in accordance with the CMA’s Leniency Programme, will therefore not receive a fine.

The companies admitted to participating in ‘cover bidding’ and colluding on prices that they would bid for on contracts.

These cover bids affected 14 contracts across a number of customers including a City law firm and education college.

•          Fourfront has agreed to pay £4,143,304
•          Loop has agreed to pay £1,090,816
•          Coriolis has agreed to pay £7,735
•          ThirdWay has agreed to pay £1,780,703
•          Oakley has agreed to pay £58,558

Chief executive at CMA, Andrea Coscelli said: “The CMA is concerned it is seeing a lot of evidence of anti-competitive conduct in the construction industry, and we have already taken a number of cases in this sector. Today’s fines reinforce the message that the CMA will not tolerate competition law being broken.”