Packages move along a conveyor belt at an Amazon fulfillment center on Cyber Monday in Robbinsville, New Jersey, U.S., on Monday, November 29, 2021.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | beautiful pictures
Amazon was fined 1.13 billion euros ($1.28 billion) by Italian antitrust regulators on Thursday for abusing its dominant market position.
Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato, or AGCM, speak that Amazon has harmed operators competing in e-commerce logistics.
They concluded that Amazon took advantage of its dominant position to incentivize Amazon.it sellers to use its own logistics service – Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).
This was done “to the detriment of the logistics services provided by competing operators, as well as to strengthen its own dominant position.”
AGCM said it will apply remedial steps that will be reviewed by a supervisory trustee.
Amazon said it “completely disagrees” with the fine and it plans to appeal. An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC: “The fines and proposed remedies are unreasonable and disproportionate.
Amazon says more than 50% of the total annual revenue on its platform in Italy comes from small and medium-sized businesses, adding that their success is key to Amazon’s business model.
An Amazon spokesperson said: “Small and midsize businesses have multiple channels to sell their products both online and offline: Amazon is just one of those options.
“We are constantly investing to support the growth of the 18,000 Italian SMBs selling on Amazon, and we offer a variety of tools for our sellers, including those who manage shipments themselves.”
Ruhell Amin, global head of retail equity research at William O’Neil + Co, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” on Thursday that it was a “significant” fine for the trading giant. e-commerce.
“It’s part of a broader trend we’ve seen in Europe around trying to regulate some of these Big Tech companies,” he said.
Amin said the concern for investors is that the Italian fine could indicate a broader trend towards Amazon regulation in other areas of business and in other parts of the world. , Amin said. “This is definitely the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
“This case is interesting because the European Commission opened its own investigation into this practice but removed Italy from the scope of the investigation to allow the Italian antitrust watchdog to conduct its own. ,” added Amin. “Typically the European Commission is quite consistent in its approach.”
Elsewhere, regulators in China are cracking down on e-commerce giant Alibaba while Latin American regulators are targeting Mercado Libre.
