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Bundeskartellamt expands action against Amazon – mail order company wants to cut thousands of jobs

The Federal Cartel Office has expanded its action against the US mail order company Amazon.

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Bundeskartellamt expands action against Amazon – mail order company wants to cut thousands of jobs

The Federal Cartel Office has expanded its action against the US mail order company Amazon. Two ongoing abuse proceedings against the group would "now also be extended to the application of the new instrument for more effective supervision of large digital groups," said the Bonn authority on Monday. "With these new powers (...) we can address Amazon's anti-competitive behavior more efficiently than before," said Andreas Mundt, head of the Cartel Office.

In July, the Federal Cartel Office declared Amazon a company with "outstanding cross-market importance for competition". Against this background, the two ongoing proceedings would now be expanded.

In the first of the two procedures, the authority is therefore investigating price control mechanisms that can lead to “retailer offers being less easy to find for end customers or even being blocked”. Amazon itself sells products on its digital marketplace and at the same time offers external retailers the opportunity to place their products there. This dual function brought the company repeated accusations of abuse of its dominant position.

The second proceeding of the Bundeskartellamt also falls into this context. According to the authority, “possible disadvantages for marketplace traders through various Amazon instruments” are being examined, for example in the case of agreements between Amazon and brand manufacturers that exclude third-party traders from selling branded products on the Amazon marketplace.

"In the two proceedings, we are investigating whether and how Amazon is affecting the business opportunities of retailers who compete with Amazon's own trading business on the Amazon marketplace," explained Mundt.

The US group had already lodged a complaint against its classification as a dominant competitor. The Federal Court of Justice will decide on this, the Cartel Office said. "However, the decision remains enforceable until then."

At the beginning of 2021, new regulations in competition law came into force. A central component is the modernization of abuse control - the supervisory authorities can now intervene earlier in the event of violations by large digital groups and prohibit anti-competitive practices. In addition to Amazon, the Cartel Office has also targeted Google's parent company Alphabet and Facebook's parent company Meta.

According to US media reports, the world's largest online mail order company Amazon is also planning its biggest job cuts to date in view of the gloomy economic outlook. The group wants to start cutting around 10,000 jobs this week, the New York Times wrote on Monday, citing insiders. The financial service Bloomberg later reported according to its own sources. According to the Wall Street Journal, "thousands" of jobs are at stake. Amazon initially did not comment.

The group recently had around 1.5 million employees worldwide. Before Christmas, for which Amazon often hires reinforcements, the job cuts would be another signal for the sudden end of the job boom in the tech industry. The line of companies announcing layoffs is getting longer and longer. For example, the Facebook and Instagram mother Meta and the online network Twitter, which was taken over by Tesla boss Elon Musk, have recently seen real job cuts.

According to the reports, the job cuts at Amazon will primarily affect the loss-making device division around Echo smart speakers and the Alexa language assistant program. The company had already warned investors of a weak final quarter and decided in early November to stop hiring in view of the increased risks of inflation and recession. Amazon is under pressure to cut costs after a spending offensive amid the pandemic. The stock is down more than 40 percent this year.

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