Rolex Fined $100 Million for Thwarting Online Watch Sales (1)

Rolex was fined about $100 million by France’s antitrust agency for pursuing an illegal decade-long crackdown on distributors selling the Swiss firm’s luxury watches online.

The Autorite de la Concurrence rejected justifications from Rolex’s French unit that an online ban “was justified by the need to combat counterfeiting and parallel trade.”

The violations are “serious, as they amount to closing a marketing channel, to the detriment of consumers and retailers, when the online distribution of luxury products, including watches, has been booming over the past 15 years,” the regulator said in a statement on Tuesday.

The fine comes with ...