2024 saw a significant increase in overall global fines for antitrust enforcement, with total penalties for the jurisdictions surveyed in our report at USD6.7 billion, over double that of 2023 (USD2.9bn) and substantially higher than 2022 (USD3.5bn). Notably, this increase was largely due to a marked uptick in abuse of dominance fines (USD4.3bn in total), with the bulk of these coming from European Commission (EC) decisions (USD3.4bn). However, while vertical (and other non-cartel) conduct fines were also up year-on-year (USD1.8bn, up from USD195 million in 2023), fines for cartel enforcement saw a marked decrease (USD602.5m, compared to USD1.9bn in 2023), reflecting a continued downward trend.
Although we always caution against drawing significant inferences from year-on-year changes, the impact of the wider scrutiny of digital markets on this year’s dataset is impossible to miss. Fines on Big Tech alone amounted to approximately USD3bn, nearly 50% of the overall fine total.
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