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$860 Million In Fines Handed Out For LCD Price-Fixing
eldavojohn writes "Six companies have pleaded guilty to worldwide price fixing of Thin-Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Displays from Sept. 14, 2001, to Dec. 1, 2006. For violating the Sherman Act, the companies have agreed to pay criminal fines of over $860 Million. In addition, nine executives have been charged in the scandal. The pricing scam affected some of the largest companies at the time, including Apple, HP and Dell. (If you bought a TFT-LCD from them in that time frame, you may be one of the victimized consumers.) From the DOJ release, 'According to the charge, Chi Mei carried out the conspiracy by agreeing during meetings, conversations and communications to charge prices of TFT-LCD panels at certain pre-determined levels and issuing price quotations in accordance with the agreements reached. As a part of the conspiracy, Chi Mei exchanged information on sales of TFT-LCD panels for the purpose of monitoring and enforcing adherence to the agreed-upon prices.'"
so what exactly happened? the article is long on confusion and short on explanations.
Someone got really greedy. Someone else caught them and is now going to use that fact to advance their political career. Some stockholders will suffer and a handful of executives will spend a few years in white collar resort prison.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You forgot the part where the wronged consumers get justice in the form of a $2 class action settlement check.
A little addendum: the final fine may vary from the stated amount. According to the document, the maximum fine may be increased to twice the amount illegally gained by the company or twice the amount of loss suffered by the victims. While 860 million USD seems a bit low, I expect the final number to be higher. (Or the given number could be a sort of "plea bargain" amount. I'm not sure.)
(((dB)))
and sell me a $50 24" wide screen monitor with a 5ms response time, and then we'll talk.
Get your free Dropbox account with 2 GB Free storage!
Corporations doing shyster deals to gain profits for share holders while braking laws and shafting the consumers? Good god whats next, corporation changing laws to punish consumers for using products in ways there were not designed to be used?
Hey hey there kid. That baseball is designed to be hit with our authorized bats. Using any unauthorized bat is prohibited and will be enforced by our "Good Consumer Police"
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
You forgot the part where the wronged consumers get justice in the form of a $2 class action settlement check.
YOU forgot the part where the wronged consumers get a coupon worth $2 off on their next purchase as their settlement.
You're misreading the summary. They weren't involved in the price fixing, they were affected by it. Apple has to pay component manufacturers just like everyone else.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
> By being involved with the price fixing...
Apple was one of the _victims_. The conspirators were some (all?) of the manufacurers who supply displays to Apple, Dell, and HP.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Which other products might have their prices controlled the same way right now?
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
Well let's see. The Taiwanese LCD producer Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) agreed to pay $220 million for violations over 5 years (2001-2006) which comes up to $44 million per year of violations.
CMO is a publicly traded company, for 2009 their net sales up to November has been almost $30 billion dollars.
CMO's market cap is $150 billion dollars.
I think it's safe to say that $44 million dollars a year is a drop in the bucket for them.
The other $640 million is divided across 5 other companies so far, which sets them about $128 million dollars each, or $25.6 million dollars a year.
Justice is served!
If you can't mod them join them.
Guess who is going to pay the $860 million. Don't look forward to cheaper LCD prices anytime soon.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
This is what real conspiracies look like. Note the distinct lack of "CIA", "Masons", "NSA" or other such favorites.
The better way to handle this is to drop the stupid ineffective fines and threaten that their products wont be allowed to sell in the USA.
Then they wouldn't even dare try to fix prices.
5 year ban.
Is this at all related to Apple selling the same model Cinema Displays since April, 2007? 982 days without a refresh, following an average of 230.
Maybe, only because Apple is only able to sell displays based on demand but were paying prices on the supply side that were artificially higher than demand. If the price-fixing stops (and this is a good sign that it has or will), presumably there will be more profits for Apple, Dell, HP, etc in LCD displays and we may therefore look forward to refreshed product lines. Price fixing can have far-reaching consequences in a global market.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
This article is of course for the criminal action and not any civil suits. Naturally, there is a proposed class action in the US for those who were victimized:
http://www.lieffcabraser.com/antitrust/lcd-antitrust.htm
The suit is for:
All persons and entities who, between January 1, 1996 and December 11, 2006, directly purchased a TFT-LCD Product in the United States from any defendant or any subsidiary or affiliate thereof, or any co-conspirator. Excluded from the Class are defendants, their parent companies, subsidiaries and affiliates, any co-conspirators, all governmental entities, and any judges or justices assigned to hear any aspect of this action.
From what it says the motion to dismiss based on lack of evidence has been thrown out. Will they settle? Will their lawyers eventually be able to squish it like a little bug? What will the payout be? That's anybody's guess. Might be worth getting on board if you were a firm that bought a ton of LCDs in that time though... I would imagine that if there was a payout, it would be per infraction rather than per customer, right? I admit that this is well outside my area of expertise.
So how much should LCDs really cost? I want some savings on my next purchase.
my opportunity to freely express myself with the potential persecution and hangings and such
Need a cartel to make this work. So the computer firms had to know or accept this. From a wink, nudge limited good quality supply, dont rock the boat to something more direct and personal.
Are docs floating around the computer firms stating to just sign, we need the parts now, as the tech matures we can escape this BS, or was in more an inner clique that kept it going as they where the only ones who saw the docs?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You mean one with conjugal visits?
Conjugal visits? Mmmm. Not that I know of. Y'know, minimum-security prison is no picnic. I have a client in there right now. He says the trick is: kick someone's ass the first day, or become someone's bitch. Then everything will be all right. W-Why do you ask, anyway?
*150 billion new Taiwan dollards equals about 4 billion dollars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Taiwan_dollar
However, you can definitely be charged and found guilty of conspiring, even if 'other alleged parties' to the conspiracy have not yet been charged, or are still under investigation.
The companies involved will most likely all be overseas companies you don't care much about. Most of the manufacturers of the TFT screens are overseas.
The companies the average US person has heard of (such as Dell, HP, etc) who sell monitors, are OEMs. That is, the manufacturers (such as the ones who do the price fixing) supply the screen. OEMs design and build an actual monitor using the OEM'd TFT, other OEM'd parts (and parts designed by the OEM), and ship the final product.
The TFT is just one of many components required to build an LCD monitor. Another manufacturer (very possibly) makes the backlight. And yet another company might make the plastic body.
From TFA, however:
Yeah, and you forgot the part where the manufacturer tacks $2.20 onto the price to cover the $2 coupon.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
$13.62? You've never actually been on the consumer end of one of these things, have you?
No, the lawyers will get 100% of the actual cash that changes hands. The "victimized consumer class" will get some bullshit "settlement" like a voucher for $50 off the list price of the next monitor they buy from the companies that did this in the first place. Of course that will work out to a much higher price than you could buy it for without said voucher... so, in effect, you get dick.
Again.
It's interesting who Chi-Mei conspired WITH. Chi-Mei is not the best LCD manufacturer and they agreed to cooperate with DOJ. There must be other companies who Chi-Mei will bust and who will pay more. Certain Koreans, perhaps?
How about turning out some new models that are a bleeding 4:3 aspect ratio, instead of 16:9? Nowadays it seems every LCD panel in the world is a repurposed HDTV unit. Those of us who lots of coding and document work tend to prefer monitors without a squished vertical aspect and a bunch of wasted horizontal space (especially considering 100% of the universe uses 8.5x11 or A4 paper that's taller than it is wide, and document design reflects this format).
The Dell LCDs at my work can rotate to a long vertical orientation.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
I've gotten cash before, though usually small amounts. Back in 2004 I got a check for $9 out of some sort of music-CD price-fixing settlement.
This particular case appears not to be a class-action suit at all, though; it's a criminal investigation that imposed a fine. So there is no settlement to distribute, since it's not a civil suit with plaintiffs.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I think you're confused on what the price fixing law is about. The item does not have to be a necessity in order for them to illegally fix the price of it.
Unless of course you understand it, and you just don't agree with it... in which case you should probably make that more clear.
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
Yes, we were victimized. There's the cost of continuing to use CRTs, which was considerable. I bought my first LCD, a 1280x1024, several years ago, for $99 after a $70 rebate. And I waited for prices to go down like they do with every other consumer electronic item, and they didn't. I was baffled, but I kept waiting, knowing it had to give some time. That there was price fixing explains much. Was 2 years before I begin to see deals equivalent to the one I got.
Meantime, I paid for owning CRTs. They use more power. They took way more room in my car, forcing me to ship more of my possessions whenever I moved. I regret having paid UPS $85 to ship a 17" CRT back in 2003. I've learned a few things about moving. Best to sell your bulky possessions cheap if you can, or even abandon them if you can't. CRTs are definitely bulky. Had there been cheap LCDs in 2003, I could have saved quite a bit of money.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Your tv - is essentially not much more than 2 glass plates with small cells with either gases or liquid crystals in them, and 2 plastic plates to cover it all, and then one graphics chip cpu-fpu-memory and all in one, plus a chip for digital tv-decoding and a tuner. These SMD components cost so little that you could buy a burger for what it actually cost to manufacture.
I imagine the machinery needed to assemble those small cells correctly and accurately is pretty expensive. However, I'd agree that the price isn't likely to drop once the capital costs of the manufacturing plant have been amortized.