Best Buy Kwong Yutaka, Chi Mei Electrics Controlling Prices

The snowballs in the panel antitrust case have grown bigger and bigger, and the Foreign Ministry reported that Best Buy, the largest electronic retail channel provider in the United States, also sued the Federal Court of San Francisco for more than ten panels including AUO, CMO, and LGD. Manufacturers are suspected of manipulating panel production and prices.

As the EU has also conducted major investigations on relevant issues, it is expected that the content will be announced at the end of this month and early next month. The global panel industry is facing strong antitrust lawsuit pressure from Europe and the United States.

According to foreign reports, the United States Best Buy in the United States on the 8th in San Francisco Federal Court lodged accusations, including AUO, Chi Mei Electric, LGD, Seiko Epson (Seiko Epson) and more than 10 LCD panel makers suspected of negotiating output between 1996 and 2006. The price violated antitrust laws. Around August this year, including New York, Illinois, Oregon, Wisconsin, Florida, Missouri, Arkansas, Michigan and West Virginia, the US state governments have successively accused the international LCD panel Dachang is suspected of plotting to manipulate product prices.

The panel industry stated that Best Buy’s time for filing this complaint was even advanced to the year 2000. At that time, Taiwan had not yet entered mass production of large-size panels (Taiwan's large-size panel production time started around mid-1999), which was only Japanese companies and Korean businessmen have the ability to provide large-size panels to supply notebooks (NBs) and LCD monitors for production and use. Therefore, it is clear that the coverage of complaints by manufacturers has become wider than before.

The list of panel makers currently known to face civil litigation in the U.S. Federal Court is as follows: AUO and its U.S. subsidiaries, Chi Mei Optoelectronics, Chi Mei Optronics Japan, U.S. companies, Caijing, Hitachi, Hitachi U.S., Hitachi Display, LGD, LGD The United States, Samsung Electronics and its subsidiaries in the United States, Samsung Semiconductor, Sharp, Toshiba, Toshiba Mobile Display, Toshiba America, and Toshiba America Electronic Components.

Panel AUO has pointed out in its recently issued notes on the issuance of overseas convertible corporate bonds (ECBs) that violated competition laws and investigated violations of the European Commission’s Competition Administration’s LCD manufacturers, including AUO. The competition law investigation has not yet made a decision, but it is expected that the investigation decision will be announced as soon as possible from this month to the next month.

According to reports, in addition to AUO, panel makers who were previously named or have pleaded guilty to negotiating are almost all listed on the EU survey. Therefore, the panel industry has not only previously conducted criminal investigations by the US Department of Justice but is currently In addition to civil compensation from the unit, it will soon be followed by another move with the European Union.