The Netherlands & Greece: Heineken forced to defend damages claims from commercial rivals in Greece

Heineken faced a major legal reckoning in a Netherlands court last week, as the beer giant finally answers claims from rivals, including MTB, of institutionalized market abuse in Greece, Business Wire reported on September 9.

The Dutch multinational’s court appearance on Tuesday (3 September, 2024) followed years of legal wrangling in the Netherlands and Greece and numerous failed attempts by Heineken to get the case thrown out.

The €160 million+ claim brought by Macedonian Thrace Brewery (MTB), an independent Greek competitor, could create a dangerous precedent for Heineken, which faces a near identical claim from Carlsberg. Heineken has been sanctioned repeatedly for market abuses in the EU and elsewhere around the world.

In 2015, the Greek competition authority ruled that Heineken’s subsidiary Athenian Brewery bullied and cajoled retailers and wholesalers in Greece to favour its products and to suppress competition between 1998 and 2014, in breach of European and Greek antitrust laws. Heineken denies any knowledge of Athenian Brewery’s anticompetitive conduct and still refuses to acknowledge that it broke any law in Greece, despite these abuses having been confirmed on appeal at every level. The company, headquartered in the Netherlands, disclosed in its last Annual Report that it had recognised a potential liability of €478 million in response to damages claims from rivals MTB and Carlsberg in respect of its unlawful conduct in the Greek market.

The Court will now determine whether Heineken is part of the same undertaking as its subsidiary and therefore jointly and severally liable for the abuse. As such, the claim is being closely scrutinized by Heineken’s commercial rivals around the world, who have frequently accused the Dutch drinks behemoth of trying to suppress competition. In recent years, Heineken has been reprimanded or investigated by competition authorities in the US and UK, Austria, Hungary, India and elsewhere.

The issue piles further pressure on the company’s Board and its CEO Dolf van den Brink, who saw Heineken’s share price decline 7% at its last quarterly update in July, with the market reacting badly to financial results that fell short of analysts’ expectations.

Demetri Chriss, Director of Business Development at MTB, said:

“Despite insisting on their operational independence from one another, Heineken and its Greek subsidiary were again represented by a single legal team.

Heineken has spent years trying to foil this litigation via numerous procedural ruses, all of which have failed. Our claim that Heineken’s subsidiary unlawfully throttled competition – to the detriment of consumers and other beer companies in Greece – has been fully supported by the regulator and upheld by the highest court in the land. At any rate, Heineken should be liable for the abusive conduct of its subsidiary because they are one and the same enterprise, forming a single undertaking under European law, plain for all to see.

But once again, Heineken deny any wrongdoing, just as they did in 2007 when they were fined more than €270 million by the EU for price fixing. That’s the Heineken way.”

The case was heard on Tuesday 3 September by the Amsterdam District Court, located at Parnassusweg 280, 1076 AV Amsterdam. A ruling is expected at the end of October 2024.

E-malt.com, the global information source for the brewing and malting industry professionals. The bi-weekly E-malt.com Newsletters feature latest industry news, statistics in graphs and tables, world barley and malt prices, and other relevant information. Click here to get full access to E-malt.com. If you are a Castle Malting client, you can get free access to E-malt.com website and publications. Contact us for more information at marketing@castlemalting.com .