The European Court of Justice upheld the antitrust fine issued to LG Electronics in 2012, mandating the South Korean tech giant to pay €540 million (US$647 million) for being part of an industry-wide cartel that was fixing prices of cathode ray tubes (CRTs) for approximately a decade, the original equipment manufacturer said on Friday, September 15.
The ultimate fine given to the Seoul-based company includes interest and will be paid within the next seven days, an LG spokesperson was quoted as saying early on Sunday, September 17. LG previously managed a CRT joint venture with Philips, with their operations being hit with an anti-competitive fine surpassing a billion euros and the firm’s Dutch partner having previously lost its appeals to the penalty.
Five more companies were charged by the European Commission for the price-fixing scandal in 2012, with their fines amounting to approximately €500 million (US$596.7 million). LG was the final appealing party in the process, whereas the remaining six companies have already exhausted their legal remedies in the case.
It was a record price-fixing fine from the EU at the time. The two cartels were among the most organized that the Commission had investigated, it said then, carrying out the “most harmful anti-competitive practices including price fixing, market sharing, customer allocation, capacity and output coordination and exchanges of commercial sensitive information.”
Full Content: Phys.Org
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