EU Issues Largest Antitrust Fine to Date for CRT TV Price Fixing 153
hankwang writes "The European commission fined a number manufacturers for pricing fixing of cathode ray tubes in the period between 1996 and 2005. The total fine was EUR 1.47 billion (USD 1.92 billion), for Philips, LG Electronics, Samsung SDI, and three other firms. According to the European Commission: 'For almost 10 years, the cartelists carried out the most harmful anti-competitive practices including price fixing, market sharing, customer allocation, capacity and output coordination and exchanges of commercial sensitive information. The cartelists also monitored the implementation, including auditing compliance with the capacity restrictions by plant visits in the case of the computer monitor tubes cartel.'"
Re:People still buy tube TVs? (Score:5, Informative)
This is what governments are for, to protect the people with legislation (treaties in EU case) and uphold them. One of those being price fixing, collusion and anti-trust.
So, they upheld their treaties by punishing those that broke them. They did their job.
Re:And now what? (Score:2, Informative)
you realize they have already been convicted of price fixing LCD's
Re:People still buy tube TVs? (Score:5, Informative)
You mean those same companies that are now selling LCD TVs at virtually identical prices?
Hmmm, wonder what a huge fine for similar behavior might have?