Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (中華映管), Taiwan’s third-largest flat-panel maker, was fined US$65 million by the US Justice Department after agreeing to plead guilty to taking part in a massive international conspiracy to fix the prices of liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panels, the glass display screens on many laptop computers, mobile phones, flat-panel TVs and hand-held devices, such as iPods.
The antitrust case was announced in Washington on Wednesday by Assistant Attorney General Thomas Barnett, who called it one of the biggest international price-fixing cases ever tackled by the department.
Chunghwa “is the first Taiwanese company to ever plead guilty to criminal charges in the United States for participating in a price-fixing conspiracy,” Barnett told reporters.
Other companies involved in the scheme were LG Display Co Ltd, and Sharp Corp of Japan.
The three agreed to pay US$585 million, of which LG paid US$400 million.
The case, which was filed in the US District Court in San Francisco, is “among the largest and most far-reaching price-fixing conspiracies the Antitrust Division [of the Justice Department] has ever detected,” Barnett said.
Taiwan is the world’s largest suppliers of LCD panels, overtaking South Korea last year. Chunghwa Picture is a major producer in Taiwan.
In response, Chunghwa Picture yesterday said: “This fine has been recognized in the accounts and therefore will not have a material impact on the company’s finances and sales.”
The company said it had booked the fine in its fthird-quarter financial results this year.
The Taoyuan-based company earned NT$113 million in the first nine months of this year, with revenues of NT$101.65 billion.
Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子), another Taiwanese LCD panel supplier that was also involved in the price-fixing probe, said yesterday that a final ruling had yet to be made in its case.
In 2006, the worldwide market for panels was about US$70 billion.
“These price-fixing conspiracies affected millions of American consumers who use computers, cellphones and numerous other household electronics every day,” Barnett said.
Chunghwa was accused of conspiring with LG and other unnamed co-conspirators from September 2001 to December 2006 to fix the price of Thin-Film Transistor LCD (TFT-LCD) panels sold worldwide, the department said in a press release issued in Washington.
According to the US accusations, Chunghwa, LG and other unnamed co-conspirators illegally met in the US, Taiwan and South Korea to discuss the price of TFT-LCD panels, in a series of sessions Barnett said were called “crystal meetings.”
They agreed at those meetings to charge predetermined prices for standard-sized panels to purchasers throughout the world and “exchanged information on sales of TFT-LCD panels for the purpose of monitoring and enforcing adherence to the agreed-upon prices.”
The companies “have agreed to cooperate with the department’s ongoing antitrust investigation,” the department said.
“Today’s fines would have been significantly higher had they not done so,” Barnett said.
In addition, Taiwanese authorities may have been cooperating with the US in the case, Barnett said.
“We have been coordinating from very early on in our investigations with a number of other competition-enforcement regimes, not only in North America but in Asia as well as in Europe,” he said.
He described the Chunghwa-Sharp-LG conspiracy as an international “cartel.”
While no executives at the companies have been convicted of violations that would result in imprisonment, the investigation is continuing and Barnett said if individuals were convicted, “they would be subject to substantial prison terms.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY LISA WANG
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS