Sonova Consumer Hearing GmbH

We would like to stress, that we are aware of our duty as a leading hearing care company to act responsibly. Sonova respects human rights and we consider it our responsibility to foster compliance with human rights not just in our own business across the globe, but also in the whole supply chain.

Sonova takes a systematic approach to managing corporate responsibility, both in its supply chain and in its own operations. Identifying and mitigating human rights risks is already an integral part of our strategic risk management process, and it is reviewed and assessed regularly, together with all other business risks. Sonova is committed to ensuring that its operations and supply chain are free from any slavery practices, including child labor, forced and bonded labor, and human trafficking. Sonova has already been proactively implementing due diligence processes of our third parties and partners and has enhanced public reporting transparency. As a global company, we are committed to further advance and continuously improve policies and processes across our own operations and supply chain.

Since at least 2015, in addition to conducting the usual negotiations on purchasing prices, Sennheiser employees also agreed on concerted measures for setting end consumer sales prices for “premium headphones” with their authorised dealers in Germany. These measures generally pertained to an increase in end consumer prices. The retailers’ end consumer prices were continuously monitored using online price comparison services and in some cases also special software. The measures were implemented, to a varying extent, especially when end consumer prices were considerably below the recommended resale price (RRP) or after retailers had complained about inadequate end consumer prices. Whenever Sennheiser intervened in this way, the retailers approached usually agreed to raise the end consumer prices in question or adjusted their prices upwards. Internally, employees used a “code language” for the concerted measures, referring to compliance with selective distribution criteria. After Sonova took over this business area from Sennheiser, the measures were continued to a lesser extent until the Bundeskartellamt’s dawn raid in September 2022.