The European Commission announced that it has fined seven international groups of companies a total of €1.47 billion for participating in either one or both of two distinct cartels in the sector of cathode ray tubes ("CRT"). According to the Commission, for almost ten years, between 1996 and 2006, these companies fixed prices, shared markets, allocated customers between themselves and restricted their output.

Following the outcome of an European Commission's investigation, this institution has fined seven international groups of companies a total of €1.47 billion for participating in either one or both of two distinct cartels in the sector of cathode ray tubes ("CRT"). The investigation revealed that between 1996 and 2006, these companies fixed prices, shared markets, allocated customers between themselves and restricted their output. Chunghwa, LG Electronics, Philips and Samsung SDI participated in both cartels, while Panasonic, Toshiba, MTPD (currently a Panasonic subsidiary) and Technicolor (formerly Thomson) participated only in the cartel for television tubes. The Commission applied antitrust legislation as it was applied in 2009 against Intel, when the Commission imposed this company a fine of €1.06 billions.

For almost 10 years, the cartelists carried out the most harmful anti-competitive practices including price fixing, market sharing, customer allocation, capacity and output coordination and exchanges of commercial sensitive information, says the Commission. The cartelists also monitored the implementation, including auditing compliance with the capacity restrictions by plant visits in the case of the computer monitor tubes cartel. The investigation also revealed that the companies were well aware they were breaking the law. The participants were taking precautions to avoid being in possession of anticompetitive documents.

The infringements found by the Commission cover the entire European Economic Area (EEA). The Commission took into account the companies' sales of the products concerned in the EEA, the very serious nature of the infringement, its geographic scope, its implementation and its duration for the fines' final amount.