New Zealand alleges forwarder price-fixing

New Zealand alleges forwarder price-fixing    New Zealand's Commerce Commission has filed charges of price-fixing and collusion against a number of air freight forwarding companies, Reuters reported Thursday.
   The investigation, announced by the commission Thursday, alleges that subsidiaries of the Deutsche Bahn Group, Kuehne + Nagel, Panalpina, EGL and Geologistics 'had colluded to fix the implementation and application of fees for freight forwarding.'
   The commission said it had reached settlements with EGL and Geologistics. Kuehne + Nagel, meanwhile, denied a case has been filed against it, according to a report Friday in Dow Jones Newswires.
   The probe began in 2007, when commission began investigating arrangements to keep prices for air freight into and out of New Zealand artificially high. Some of the alleged agreements date back to 2001, the report said.
   The top global freight forwarding companies have faced a barrage of investigations from Europe and the United States in recent years over similar price-fixing allegations.