Hitachi Admits to Price Fixing

Today, Hitachi has been found guilty of price-fixing, through its own admission, in the current round of a court battle involving three other companies that produce TFT-LCD screens. The others are LG, Sharp, and lesser known Chunghwa.

from BetaNews

Hitachi would pay the least of the four companies thus far: $31 million. In turn, the Antitrust Division said today, it will agree that it participated in meetings with representatives of its competitors in which they conspired to set the price that Dell Computer would be charged for TFT-LCD displays. From April 2001 through March 2004, Hitachi then quoted Dell the agreed upon prices, the DoJ said, and then reported its progress back to other cartel members.

The plea agreement is subject to court approval. However, the company that so far has paid the least in monetary penalties — Chunghwa, at $65 million — is paying the most in terms of hard time. Three Chunghwa executives were ordered to prison and to pay personal fines, including the former CEO, who was sentenced to nine months and a $50,000 fine.

To me, the surprise is not the admission, but the fact that our government entity, the Antitrust Division of the DOJ, was actually on the ball enough to get these convictions. Score one for the Bush administration – everyone wasn’t asleep or on the pay list.

It is amazing how much the prices for LCDs have come down of late – it has not all been due to television adoption.

It would also be interesting to get an insight on the part that Dell had in this. At first, it would seem that they benefit from the lowered prices after the court cases came up, but I seem to remember that Dell had almost insanely better prices than anyone else during the discussed time frame above. Was the price fixing also allowing them to have better pricing than their competitors, or possibly greater availability?

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