The offices of Bertelsmann AG's book unit and several other...

The offices of Bertelsmann AG's book unit and several other German publishers were raided by European Union competition authorities, underscoring the impact the Internet is having on one of Europe's most resistant Old Economy industries. Officials are expected to collect evidence of what they believe is a collusive effort by the German publishers to control prices of books sold to German consumers by an online bookshop based in Austria. The EU competition commission suspects that Bertelsmann and more than 30 other German publishers colluded to stop supplying books to Vienna-based Libro AG after the company's Internet arm began cutting prices on books ordered by customers in Germany.

Wednesday, 2 August, 2000