Thursday, December 06, 2012

"Free" competition

Executives from some of the world’s biggest electronics manufacturers met in Europe and Asia to illegally fix the price of televisions and computers for a decade. Philips, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Toshiba and two other firms. The cartel “anti-competitive practices” included price fixing, market sharing, customer allocation and exchanging commercially-sensitive information. Staff were told to destroy incriminating documents. Executives would agree the frauds at “green” meetings – so-called because afterwards they would play golf.

Consumers consequently paid an “over price” for TVs and computers. The scam was “among the most organised cartels that the Commission has investigated”

They were fined by the EU a total of €1.4bn (£1.1bn).Naturally, the CEOs involved got off scot-free.

Samsung Electronics and  LG companies with three other companies were penalised a total €648 million two years ago for taking part in another cartel.

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