Wednesday, May 19th 2010
EU Slaps Chip Vendors with Penalties for Price-Fixing
As many as nine major chip vendors were fined a total of 331 million Euros (US $404.2 million) for participating in illegal price-fixing activities, by the European Union authorities. These include Samsung, Hynix, Nanya, Elpida, Infineon, NEC, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Mitsubishi. A 10th company in this price-fixing cartel was Micron Technology, which escaped the fine for exposing the malpractice to the EU authorities. Of these Samsung was given the single biggest fine of 146 million Euros, followed by Infineon at 57 million Euros. The fines were reduced by 10% because all companies extended cooperation in the investigations.
The price-fixing cartel mostly involved bad trade of DRAM chips, and was active between 1998 and 2002, operating with a network of contacts which secretly exchanged pricing information. They colluded to fix prices of DRAM chips sold to major PC and server manufacturers. Investigations in the scam began in 2002 when Micron blew the whistle on the cartel. "By acknowledging their participation in a cartel the companies have allowed the Commission to bring this long-running investigation to a close and to free up resources to investigate other suspected cartels," said EU's Competition Commissioner, Joaquin Almunia. "As the procedure is applied to new cases it is expected to speed up investigations significantly," he added.
Source:
BBC News
The price-fixing cartel mostly involved bad trade of DRAM chips, and was active between 1998 and 2002, operating with a network of contacts which secretly exchanged pricing information. They colluded to fix prices of DRAM chips sold to major PC and server manufacturers. Investigations in the scam began in 2002 when Micron blew the whistle on the cartel. "By acknowledging their participation in a cartel the companies have allowed the Commission to bring this long-running investigation to a close and to free up resources to investigate other suspected cartels," said EU's Competition Commissioner, Joaquin Almunia. "As the procedure is applied to new cases it is expected to speed up investigations significantly," he added.
46 Comments on EU Slaps Chip Vendors with Penalties for Price-Fixing
They buy the DIMMs for cheap(even if they assemble them). REAL CHEAP. Many people, who work at these companies, get food put on thier plates for the increased cost. They can only lower prices so much.
Do you read the tech news? Staff at Foxconn are killing themselves from having such crappy jobs. If ya want cheap parts, that's what it takes.
I am so sick of hearing a select few have a pop at the EU for every little thing they see posted in the news section, heck you wanna talk lawsuits? the grand ol US of A invented them. You cant breath over there for someone filing a lawsuit about something or other.
And by the way I am not from the EU, I am from the UK though the ignorant few of you dont even know the bloody difference or that we dont even have the same currencies.
heres a couple of nice things to try, go and google EU IT Lawsuits and then google US IT Lawsuits.
Whilst some are happy in their bubbles please dont spout about others when you need only look closer to home.
Every time the EU successfully pins down a company for market rules violation, the FTC follows the example and does the exact same thing.
Just check what happened with Intel and Microsoft. The EU gets them and some months later we hear the FTC is doing the exact same investigation.
Actually it has more to do with German and French governments wanting to bail their banks who lent to Greece out, because if Greece defaults, those banks are screwed.