European watchdog fines nine chipmakers €331.2 million for price fixing

A group of nine chipmakers agreed to pay a fine of €331.2 million ($403.5 million) to settle a price-fixing case brought by European Union antitrust regulators, making it the first-ever settlement in a charge of cartellisation.

The cartel operated between 1 July 1998, and 15 June 2002, and " involved a network of contacts and sharing of secret information, mostly on a bilateral basis, through which they coordinated the price levels and quotations for DRAMs (Dynamic Random Access Memory), sold to major PC or server original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the EEA. DRAMs is a common model for "dynamic" semiconductor memories for personal computers (PCs), servers and workstations, said the Commission in a statement.

The biggest fine was levied on the market leader in chips, South Korea's Samsung with €145.7 million, followed by Germany's Infineon with €145.7 million.

Others involved in the price fixing were Hynix Semiconductor, Elpida Memory, NEC Electronics, Hitachi, Toshiba, Mitsubishi Electric and Nanya Technology, while Micron of the US, escaped paying any fine since it first reported the cartel to the European Commission in 2002.

"This first settlement decision is another milestone in the Commission's anti-cartel enforcement. 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. As the procedure is applied to new cases it is expected to speed up investigations significantly, said Commission vice president and Competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia.

Since all companies agreed to the settlement, they were fined 10 per cent less, Samasung saved about 20 per cent less fine and Infineon about 50 per cent, partly because of agreeing to the settlement and partly because of other leniency arrangements.

Hynix was fined €51.5 million, Toshiba €17.6 million, Mitsubishi €16.6 million, Nanya €1.8 million, NEC €10.3 million and jointly with Elpida and Hitachi got a €8.5 million and another joint one with Hitachi of €2.1 million.