57By the first part of this plea, the applicant complains in essence that the Commission made a manifest error of assessment and misapplied the criterion of effective economic capacity to cause significant damage to other operators, referred to in Section 1A, fourth paragraph, of the Guidelines, when it divided the members of the vitamin B5 cartel into categories. The Commission failed to take into account two factors which, in the applicant's view, were of vital importance for the purpose of comparing the capacity of the three undertakings concerned to cause damage: first, the fact that Roche and BASF, being vertically integrated, were in a position, by increasing the price of vitamin B5, to squeeze the margins of their competitors in the downstream market for pre-mixes; second, the fact that Roche and BASF, since they produce a huge range of vitamins, were able to carry out predatory pricing in the vitamin B5 market, cross-subsidising the ensuing losses by increasing the prices of other vitamins.
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