The European Commission fined Kingspan €40 million for incorrect and misleading information supplied during the review of its planned 2021 acquisition of Trimo, a deal Kingspan abandoned in April 2022; both companies make mineral-fibre sandwich panels used in construction and industrial insulation. The Commission found four distinct infringements across the merger notification and replies to Article 11 requests: misleading information on how Kingspan tracks penetration rates, incorrect or misleading bidding data, incorrect information on board members’ involvement in the deal and strategy, and misleading R&D information. The fine is €10 million per infringement, within the up-to-1-percent-of-turnover ceiling; two of the six instances flagged in the March 2024 Statement of Objections were later dropped.
This is the Commission’s fourth incorrect-information decision under the EU Merger Regulation, after Facebook (€110m, 2017), General Electric (€52m, 2019) and Sigma-Aldrich (€7.5m, 2021). A similar probe into KKR’s disclosures on its NetCo acquisition opened in July 2025.