Hello and welcome to another MNX podcast. My name's James Panicki. I'm MNX's

Australasian managing editor and I'm coming to you from our offices in Melbourne, Australia. Great to

have your company.

Now, there's nothing we like more here at Emmex than an old school cartel lawsuit.

And the Blue Scope Steel Court action announced in Australia at the end of August ticks or checks many of our antitrust boxes.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, or A-Triple-C, is alleging

that Blue Scope and a former high-ranking manager, Jason Ellis, attempted to induce steel

distributors in Australia, as well as overseas manufacturers, into a price-fixing agreement

for flat steel products. So the allegations are that there was an attempt to set up

a cartel rather than an actual cartel. Then to complicate matters further, Ellis was hit with

a criminal charge, that of obstructing the course of justice. This may be common in the US,

but it's the first time an abstraction charge has been laid

against an individual as part of an antitrust lawsuit in Australia.

Laurel Henning is a senior Emelix correspondent based in Sydney and she's been following

the Blue Scope case for us, adding some interesting reporting to recent developments.

Hello Laurel.

Hi James.

Let's get to the

abstraction charges in just a moment, but first let's talk about the antitrust lawsuit. What is

Blue Scope and what is the ACC alleging? So Blue Scope is a major manufacturer in Australia of

flat steel products. Now, for those of us less familiar, flat steel products include slabs,

hot rolled coil, cold rolled coil, coated steel products, tin plate and heavy plate. A bit of a

...