Autoridade da Concorrência Fines Grupo Multimoto €729,000 for Coordinating Resale Prices and Blocking Dealers From Selling Rival Motorcycle Brands

The Autoridade da Concorrência (AdC, Portuguese Competition Authority) has imposed a coima (administrative fine) of €729,000 on Grupo Multimoto for two parallel infringements of the Lei da Concorrência (Competition Act, Lei 19/2012): resale price maintenance (RPM) — the coordination of public sale prices with downstream distributors — and exclusivity clauses that prevented dealers from commercialising competing brands. The decision, disclosed on 3 June 2026, lands on a group that was acquired only last year and that the AdC itself cleared in a non-opposition merger review.

Multimoto is the importer and atacadista (wholesaler) for a portfolio of two-wheel and small-vehicle brands sold through a national rede de revendedores: motociclos, scooters, ciclomotores, tricycles, quadricycles classified as L7e (the heavier ATV bracket) and motos de água (personal watercraft). Salvador Caetano — the Porto-based automotive distribution group that holds Toyota Caetano Portugal and the Toyota dealer network — took a 75% controlling stake in Multimoto through its Caetano 8 vehicle in 2025, with the AdC clearing the operation (Ccent. 30/2025) in June of that year on a non-opposition basis. The conduct sanctioned today predates the Salvador Caetano takeover and runs through Multimoto's pre-acquisition perimeter.

The two infringements line up against the same factual matrix. On RPM, the AdC found that Multimoto, on multiple occasions, fixed the retail price at which downstream dealers could offer the products to the público (public) — depriving consumers of intra-brand price competition and locking the distribution chain into a price floor. RPM is treated as a hard-core restriction under Article 9 of the Lei da Concorrência and under Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), and it carries an almost-automatic infringement label once evidence of the price coordination is established. On the second branch, the AdC found that one entity inside the Multimoto perimeter prohibited dealers from selling concorrentes (competing) brands inside the same point of sale — a vertical exclusivity clause that, under European Commission guidance and the new Vertical Block Exemption Regulation (VBER 2022/720), is permissible only within tight limits on market share and contract duration.

The €729,000 fine slots into the AdC's standard sanctioning framework. Under Article 69 of the Lei da Concorrência, the cap on antitrust fines is 10% of the infringer's prior-year worldwide turnover. The AdC's penalty calculation typically combines a base proportion of relevant turnover with adjustments for gravidade (severity), duração (duration) and aggravating or mitigating circumstances. The 729-thousand figure puts the case at the small-to-mid range of the AdC's competition-fines tape — well below the headline penalties levied against the cement, energy or banking cartels, but comfortably above the €50,000 association-of-topógrafos sanction from 2024.

For the Salvador Caetano group, the timing is awkward. The takeover thesis on Multimoto was a category extension out of four-wheel Toyota distribution into the broader leve (light) mobility stack — scooters and electric L7e platforms in particular, where regulatory tailwinds out of Brussels favour smaller-format urban vehicles. The AdC's findings do not impair the operating licences nor the brand contracts that Multimoto holds, but they tighten the compliance perimeter around price communications and dealer-contract templates. Multimoto can appeal the decision to the Tribunal da Concorrência, Regulação e Supervisão (TCRS) in Santarém under Article 84 of the Lei da Concorrência — a route most sanctioned undertakings take, and which historically produces partial confirmations and partial reductions of the headline coima.