DRAM cartel settles with European Commission, will pay €331 million fine

When the U.S. Department of Justice brought an antitrust suit against PC memory manufacturers in 2002, the RAM you see above wasn’t even a twinkle in an engineer’s eye… but seven years after Micron revealed the existence of a price fixing cartel and four years after Samsung sent three executives to jail and paid a $300 million penalty, the European Commission has slapped DRAM manufacturers with yet another fine. Those who ‘fessed up early were partially let off the hook, but Infineon and Hynix will shoulder €57 million and €51 million respectively, while Samsung owes Europe a cool €145 million for its role in the scandal. Of course, for a company that counts a quarterly $459 million in profit during an off year, we’re talking about another slap on the wrist.

DRAM cartel settles with European Commission, will pay €331 million fine originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 May 2010 02:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Europa.eu  | Email this | Comments

This post is tagged: antitrust suit, cartel, collusion, Commission, conspiracy, cool, cool euro, criminal, department of justice, DRAM, dram manufacturers, Engadget, engineer, Euro, europe, european, european commission, EuropeanCommission, existence, eye, fine, hook, Hynix, infineon, jail, justice, legal, memory, memory manufacturers, micron, nbsp, pc memory, penalty, price, price fixing, PriceFixing, RAM, role, Samsung, scandal, settlement, seven years, slap, suit, Twinkle, U.S. Department