Change of Times
In contemporary antitrust law, price-fixers have enjoyed a somewhat “gentlemanesque” image.
Price-fixers, as the story goes, would typically be well-instructed managers, who would convene in the smoked-filled rooms of luxury hotels, drink Cognac and exchange views about prices, politics and philosophy.
But since yesterday, the masks have fallen, revealing the true face of XXIst century price fixers.
According to this website, and as reported by the Handelsblatt:
“the Steel managers who were fixing prices and dividing up the railway track market took Deutsche Bahn employees to brothels after talking business over dinner, spending more than €71,000 on “entertaining” over five years“.
The bottom-line (courtesy of a good friend met yesterday at RBB’s party): “Germans always put business before pleasure“.
Chillin'Competition 
You can also read this in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung…
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/medienberichte-schienenkartell-soll-sich-auch-im-bordell-getroffen-
haben-11886113.html
jsuderow@suderow.es
13 September 2012 at 12:01 pm
Actually, I am not that surprised … and I may not be so wrong then when I abuse the metaphor of gangsters/mafia in my class when discussing cartels and borrow the Sopranos characters’ names when inventing a case !
Pataphysicienne
13 September 2012 at 11:25 pm