Five large companies are convicted of price collusion in the electronics market and will pay $ 528 million by court decision
The California District Court ruled a lawsuit by a group of consumers who accused a number of large companies of price collusion. We are talking about the fact that at the end of 2007 and at the beginning of 2008 such major players in the electronics market as Samsung, Philips, Toshiba, Hitachi and Panasonic jointly fixed the prices of monitors and cathode ray televisions, rejecting free competition.
The amount of compensation that the companies involved in the lawsuit have already agreed to pay is a significant $ 528 million. The largest part of this amount will be paid by Samsung - $ 225 million, followed by Philips in the amount of payments - the Dutch company will refund $ 175 million. The rest of it will fall on Toshiba, Hitachi and Panasonic. Interestingly, the court in the United States and in fact the greatest fault of Samsung - this is not the first statement of its participation in questionable market transactions. Back in 2009, Japanese regulators fined the South Korean company in a similar lawsuit, however, then the amount of damage was much more modest - 3.3 billion yen (approximately $ 37 million).
A little later, Samsung came under the attention of the EU antimonopoly committee. European Commissioner for Competition Joaquin Almunia (who also heads the investigation against Google) announced then that six companies - Philips, LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Toshiba and Chunghwa (Taiwan) - agreed to keep prices fixed for 10 years for them -beam tubes, which at that time were an essential component for monitors and televisions. In Europe, however, Philips paid the largest fine - 313 million euros. The total payment then amounted to 1.47 billion euros.
The investigation of the regulators revealed a curious fact: meetings for concluding cartel agreements were secretly called their participants as “green meetings”, because after discussing all the issues, it was customary to play golf. “For almost a decade, cartel members carried out very destructive and anti-competitive actions, including price fixing, market sharing, customer division, coordination of production volumes and the exchange of commercially important information,” the European Union said at the time.
The amount of compensation that the companies involved in the lawsuit have already agreed to pay is a significant $ 528 million. The largest part of this amount will be paid by Samsung - $ 225 million, followed by Philips in the amount of payments - the Dutch company will refund $ 175 million. The rest of it will fall on Toshiba, Hitachi and Panasonic. Interestingly, the court in the United States and in fact the greatest fault of Samsung - this is not the first statement of its participation in questionable market transactions. Back in 2009, Japanese regulators fined the South Korean company in a similar lawsuit, however, then the amount of damage was much more modest - 3.3 billion yen (approximately $ 37 million).
A little later, Samsung came under the attention of the EU antimonopoly committee. European Commissioner for Competition Joaquin Almunia (who also heads the investigation against Google) announced then that six companies - Philips, LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Toshiba and Chunghwa (Taiwan) - agreed to keep prices fixed for 10 years for them -beam tubes, which at that time were an essential component for monitors and televisions. In Europe, however, Philips paid the largest fine - 313 million euros. The total payment then amounted to 1.47 billion euros.
The investigation of the regulators revealed a curious fact: meetings for concluding cartel agreements were secretly called their participants as “green meetings”, because after discussing all the issues, it was customary to play golf. “For almost a decade, cartel members carried out very destructive and anti-competitive actions, including price fixing, market sharing, customer division, coordination of production volumes and the exchange of commercially important information,” the European Union said at the time.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/291194/
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