U.S. hits Sharp with LCD price-fixing fine

WASHINGTON (Kyodo) Sharp Corp. and two other Asian electronics companies agreed to pay a total of $585 million in criminal fines for conspiring to fix prices on liquid crystal display panels, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday.

Sharp will pay $120 million, LG Display Co. of South Korea $400 million, the second-highest criminal fine ever imposed by the department's antitrust division, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd. of Taiwan $65 million.

The conspiracies involved thin-film transistor liquid crystal display, or TFT-LCD, panels used in computer monitors and notebooks, TVs, cell phones and other devices, the department said. The global market for TFT-LCD panels was about $70 billion in 2006, it said.

"These price-fixing conspiracies affected millions of American consumers who use computers, cell phones and numerous other household electronics every day," Justice official Thomas Barnett said.

Sharp was fined for its role in fixing the price of TFT-LCD panels sold to Dell Inc. from April 2001 to December 2006, to Motorola Inc. from fall 2005 to the middle of 2006 and to Apple Computer Inc. from September 2005 to December 2006.

Japanese and European antitrust authorities are also probing the LCD market for similar illegal conduct, Barnett said.

"There are a number of other participants in this market that have not been charged today," he said. "This is very much an ongoing investigation."

Sharp issued a statement saying it will strive to prevent further misconduct and win back public trust. Some of its top executives will voluntarily return 10 percent to 30 percent of their pay for three months starting in December, the firm said.

"Sharp understands the gravity of this situation and will strengthen and thoroughly implement measures to prevent the recurrence of this kind of problem, and will earnestly work to regain the public's confidence," the company said.

The incident is expected to have a detrimental impact on Sharp's performance. The Osaka-based firm said it will book an amount equivalent to the fine as an extra loss in the October-December period.