RSSGuilty pleas may not be the end for TFT-LCD makers in collusion case
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published November 14, 2008, 12:03 PM
Wednesday's announcement by the Justice Dept. that three international LCD panel manufacturers will plead guilty in a price fixing scandal, could result in the resumption of civil proceedings against them.
LG (which had been doing business jointly with Philips), Sharp, and Chunghwa -- three of the world's major producers of LCD displays -- will plead guilty to specific charges of conspiracy to artificially prop up the wholesale prices of their products, from the spring of 2001 to the winter of 2006. This despite the fact that those prices were on historic declines throughout that period.
The guilty pleas may represent the harvesting period, rather than the outright end, of an international investigation begun in December 2006, which also involved NEC, Sharp, Seiko, Toshiba, and Hitachi. The DOJ, in cooperation with its counterparts in South Korea, Japan, and Europe, launched an investigation two years ago into whether essentially the entire world's producers of LCD displays made agreements with one another not to compete on price.
In one example cited by the DOJ, Sharp (soon to become part of Panasonic, which was part of a joint venture that was also part of the investigation) will apparently allocate to having conducted discussions with its competitors about how much it should charge clients including Dell, Apple, and Motorola.
The wholesale price any company charges its major corporate clients has direct bearing on the prices it charges its smaller clients; and in US District Court in San Francisco Wednesday, some of those clients -- the total number of which could extend into the dozens -- filed motions that would enable their civil cases against their suppliers to proceed. Many of those cases were filed in the spring of 2007, when the international investigation started to bear fruit, but were suspended on judges' orders pending the outcome of the DOJ investigation.
Although the complete investigation is presumably nowhere near complete, the fact that three major targets will admit to being conspirators, may serve as evidence that a global LCD-TFT cartel did indeed exist.
LG has agreed to pay a fine of $400 million, the second highest ever to be attained by the DOJ's Antitrust division. Sharp will pay $120 million, and Chunghwa has agreed to pay $65 million.
Good. LG is crap anyways. Cheap plasmas and LCD's for people to "appear" wealthy.
"Look, I have the cheapest flat screen money can buy on my wall, this elevates me from douchebag status." ........ Sorry, your still a douchebag.
Call me when you have a Runco with built-in ISF calibration and RS-232 control on your wall.
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Not too surprising, as the cost of production, as well as the lifecycle production curves of the manufacturers reached a point where the seller's market, inwhich demand outstripped supply, shifted to a production glut resulting in oversupply greater than the demand.
This situation should continue and we should anticipate significant mergers and additional manufacturers dropping out of the market, as the long term demand will not support so many producers who rushed in to take advantage of the upswing/'window of market opportunity' portion of the lifecycle curve.
iSuppli had been accurately predicting that for several years prior.
As this situation naturally developed, this situation in the industry ahould have been pretty easy to spot. Good job.
As for the consumers below who whine - you agreed to pay a price that represented its value to you! You didn't have to! You could have said, nope, that's too high, and not purchased it!
Instead, the value YOU decided it has has no necessary relation to the production cost. So your whine is moot.
The only thing whiny early adopters can claim is a bruised ego and an inflated sense of the worth of the set! Consumers Reports and iSuppli had been suggesting waiting for the next year or two (2-3 years ago) when they expected prices to drop by ~40% per year!
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unfortunately, manufacturers are capricious and will utilize low quality parts to make their products, while they continue to market their products as high quality and maintain profits for outrageous salaries and dividends.
none of this has nothing to do about consumer whining but rather controlling theft by misrepresentation and market manipulation by greedy corporates.
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Complaining about using low cost parts and marketing claims!???
What does that have to do with anything?
Caveat emptor! What, so you take marketing brochure literally? You ARE clueless!
This has nothing to do with what you claim! They were price fixing - all the rest that you mention is simply YOUR fabricated emotional baggage. And you do what for a living? I am curious, as you sound like some teeneager who has just discovered that some in the world are not honest! Oh my!
So tell us, as we would all like to know - where does the ONE honest person on the world work and what you do. I am sure whatever it is that it will have a squeaky clean history that can serve as a shining example to us all.
Yup, fundamental business is all corrupt. Go back to your cave an hide under your bed, as evidently you are the only honest person around.
What a flake. ROFLMAO!
Oh, and as far as quality and being taken for a ride, pick up a copy of Consumer Reports Buying Guide as a start of your education. You obviously need one!
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interesting...
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It is NOT Sharp becomming a part of Panasonic BUT Sanyo.
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Oh Snap!
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But who will pay the people who where actually cheated? No one. The government gets fat, the people who are actually ripped off get nothing. Hummmm this almost sounds like the "bail out" deal.
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It is a rescue plan for lawyers faced with uncertain economic times!
Come on Mr Long we now the lawyers are hungry and need to feed there families. Not to mention how good they did to give money to the Obama campaign.
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Please... Under a libertopian system the average person is left to fend for themselves. It's capitalism at its worse.
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Listen to the dictatorial socialist rant.
What we need is a 5 year plan which includes rules whereby "no one can break the law" Oh wait, that is already the law. Well, we need more laws saying you can't break the law! That will show them we're serious!
Funny, we don't hear you whine about cartels and 3rd world oil suppliers whose entire modus operandi consists of price fixing? And most of those have your form of 'progressive'(sic) government...LOL! But not to worry, I am sure you have a way to blame it on the US.
You see, no one is ever to blame in the holes from which this guy claims to belong.
Spoken like an idiot who considers the governments of Haiti, Somalia or China as ideal models.
What a nitwit.
LOL!
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