07/21/08 Price Fixing

There are certain "businesses" that one expects to be the focus of a raid on their premises. A chocolate manufacturer is not one of them. However, in a rather strange chain of events last week the German offices of chocolate makers of Mars, Ritter, Nestle and Kraft were raided on the suspicion that they had acted together to secretly fix prices. The U.S. Department of Justice has also contacted the U.S. office of Mars Candy. Hershey, one of the largest chocolate manufacturers and certainly one of the most well known has so far remained unscathed by the price fixing probe. As with numerous companies around the globe chocolate manufacturers claim that price increases were necessary due to the rising cost of raw materials. And while the downward spiraling economy does create the domino effect with businesses causing price increases that are passed on to the consumer, the very act of taking advantage of this set of circumstances is predatory, and sadly very common place in today's world. The chocolate business may soon find out though that price fixing can be very bittersweet indeed.