Reuters: Regulatory News: UPDATE 1-EU suspects 13 optical disk drive firms of cartel

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UPDATE 1-EU suspects 13 optical disk drive firms of cartel Jul 24th 2012, 10:46 Tue Jul 24, 2012 6:46am EDT BRUSSELS, July 24 (Reuters) - European Union antitrust regulators told 13 optical disk drive producers on Tuesday that they may have breached EU rules by rigging bids over a five-year period as part of a worldwide cartel that may lead to fines for the companies involved. The European Commission said it had sent statements of objections or charge sheets to the companies, which it did not name in line with its usual policy. "The Commission has concerns that those suppliers may have coordinated their behaviour in bidding events organised by two major original equipment manufacturers for optical disk drives used in personal computers (desktops and notebooks) and in servers," the EU watchdog said in a statement. Optical disk drives read or write data on CDs and DVDs. The EU executive can penalise companies up to 10 percent of their global sales if found guilty of breaching EU rules. U.S. regulators, which are also investigating price fixing in the sale of optical disk drives like CD-ROMs, charged a joint venture between Hitachi Ltd and LG Electronics with the offence last year. In 2009, Hitachi, Toshiba and Sony said they had been subpoenaed by the U.S. Department of Justice related to the investigation. Dell, Microsoft and Hewlett Packard are among the major buyers of optical disk drives.

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