Successfully defending Ahlsell in one of Finland’s biggest-ever competition infringement cases

We successfully represented Ahlsell Oy, the leading Nordic distributor of installation products, tools and supplies, in one of the biggest-ever competition infringement cases in Finland.

We represented Ahlsell at the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority (the FCCA) in the authority’s decade-long investigation and in the Finnish Market Court in the subsequent approx. 2-year long court proceedings. In 2022, the FCCA had proposed that the Market Court should impose fines totalling EUR 44 million on the alleged infringers of competition law (of which EUR 4 million on Ahlsell). However, in August 2024, the Market Court dismissed the FCCA's case in its entirety and ordered the FCCA to pay an unprecedented sum of altogether EUR 1.65 million of legal costs to the respondents.

This is a unique victory in the history of Finnish competition law as it is the first time that the FCCA lost an infringement case in its entirety on the merits. The legal costs are the only part of the judgment the FCCA appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court, the final instance, where the appeal is currently pending and where we continue to represent Ahlsell.

Ahlsell is the leading Nordic distributor of installation products, tools and supplies addressing installers, contractors, facility managers, industry, energy companies and the public sector. Ahlsell offers a wide range of products and services to professional users in the segments of HVAC, electrical, tools and machinery. The group has an annual turnover of approx. SEK 50 billion (approx. EUR 4.6 billion), almost 8,000 employees, and more than 300 stores, e-commerce and four central warehouses. Ahlsell Oy, a Finnish company, is part of the Swedish Ahlsell group.