SAP shares drop on probe into US federal price fixing

(Sharecast News) - Shares in SAP were down nearly 4% on Wednesday on reports that the German enterprise software giant, among others, is being investigated for potential price-fixing on government contracts. According to federal court filings, first reported by Bloomberg, the Justice Department is probing whether SAP has been conspiring with government IT solutions group Carahsoft Technology to illegally fix prices on sales to US government agencies since 2014.

Court records indicated that the companies could have potentially overcharged customers a combined $2bn over the course of a decade.

SAP is Germany's most valuable company with a market capitalisation of around €250bn, and is a leading vendor of tech to the US government.

Carahsoft, which partners with vendors, resellers, system integrators and managed service providers to market, sell and deploy IT solutions for the US and Canadian public sectors, saw its Virginia offices raided by FBI agents on Tuesday, though it was not clear whether this pertained to the SAP probe or not.

SAP's stock was down 3.7% at €199.16 by 1153 in Frankfurt.