Chipmakers fined by EU for price-fixing

This article is about nine chip makers who have been fined by the European Union regulators for illegally fixing prices. The involved companies are Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, NEC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Elpida and Nanya. There was also another company involved, namely Micron. That company has alerted the competition authorities and doesn’t have to pay a fine.

Between 1998 and 2002, the ten companies were operating with a network of contacts to share secret information with each other. They were setting prices for DRAM chips. These chips were sold to major PC makers and server manufacturers.

Samsung has to pay 146 million euros, that’s the biggest fine. The second biggest fine was for Infineon, who has to pay 57 million euros.

All the companies received a 10 % reduction because they admitted that they were involved in the cartel.

Only Infineon is situated in the EU, but the EU’s anti-trust regulator said that all the companies were penalized because they sell their products in the European Economic Area and therefore they were a subject to EU law, which bans practices that restrict competition.

I think that it’s good that all the companies have been fined, although they aren’t situated in the EU. They were operating in the European Economic Area, so they need to follow the European Law. Price-fixing isn’t fair towards the other competitors. In this case, a lot of big companies were forming a cartel, so the little companies who were also producing DRAM chips were very disadvantaged.

Kimberley Prinsier
3RP2

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10126755