My Aching Hip, Part IV - A Rogue Salesman
Guardian Unlimited reports that …
… Smith & Nephew, the replacement hip and bandages group, believes one of its 500 sales representatives in the US is at the heart of an abandoned cartel plot being investigated by the department of justice. The FBI is conducting an anti-trust investigation into activities involving S&N and four US competitors - Zimmer, Biomet, Stryker and Johnson & Johnson subsidiary DePuy. Together they control 80% of the American market for hip, knee and shoulder implants. After an internal investigation, S&N said: “It has come to our attention that an independent orthopaedic sales representative under contract to the company sent an email on October 28 2005 to competitors.” The email, from an unnamed salesman, concerned an unnamed hospital and suggested the competitors “join in a coordinated response to the hospital’s request … for proposals”.
Zimmer recently announced that it had received an email soliciting agreement on “a uniform pricing strategy.”
All companies said they did not believe the email had been acted upon. “That email was in clear contravention of S&N’s policies and was not authorised by company management,” London-listed S&N said in a statement.
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September 13th, 2006 at 11:54 am
[…] During an earnings call yesterday, the CEO of Stryker reiterated the earlier reports that the Department of Justice’s antitrust investigation into the orthopedic industry is focused on a single, and unsuccessful, incident. Dow Jones Newswires, via Easy Bourse, reports that: The top official at Stryker Corp. (SYK) on Monday backed assessments from competitors that suggested a Department of Justice antitrust investigation of the orthopedics sector is based on a single, unsuccessful attempt to set an industry pricing strategy. […]