Engineering firm ABB confirms EU price investigation at Swedish business

ABB confirms EU price probe at Swedish business

GENEVA — Engineering company ABB Group said Thursday its offices in Sweden have been targeted in a European Union price fixing investigation.

The investigation took place at the premises of ABB’s flexible alternating current transmission systems — or FACTS — business, the Swiss-based company confirmed.

FACTS are used to better control and increase electrical transfer capability over networks.

“We are cooperating fully with the authorities,” ABB spokesman Wolfram Eberhardt said in a statement. “As this is an ongoing investigation ABB cannot comment further at this time or comment on the involvement of any other companies.”

The European Union confirmed it carried out “targeted inspections” on Jan. 20 but didn’t name the companies involved.

Eberhardt said the company is committed to fair and open competition and prohibits its employees from engaging in anticompetitive practices.

“ABB has a zero tolerance policy to illegal or unethical behavior,” it said.

ABB was one of six companies fined by the European Union last year for having secretly agreed to artificially raise the prices of their power transformers by not selling them in each other’s markets. The transformers are used to modify the voltage in electricity transmission networks. The other fined companies were Alstom SA and Areva T&D SA of France, and Fuji Electrics, Hitachi and Toshiba of Japan.

Analysts at Zuercher Kantonalbank said ABB could face high fines if found guilty of price fixing in its FACTS business.

ABB shares closed 2.7 percent lower at 19.28 Swiss francs ($18.09) on the Zurich exchange.