Its distributors swore they would start legal action and confidently predicted that the European Union would crush GSK like a bug for breaking anti-competitive trading laws. A year later none of this has happened. The distributors contented themselves with a complaint to the European Commission. Meanwhile, the European Commission is awaiting the outcome of a similar quota case against Bayer in the European Court of Justice. This may be held this summer.

Our Analysis: Distributors always scream blue murder, but rarely take action against suppliers. And the European Commission is incompetent. It brought its first case against Bayer on the grounds that its quota system constituted a cartel with the distributors. The judge in that case concluded that as it was the distributors who had complained to the European Commission the arrangement could hardly be described as a cartel and found in favour of Bayer.