A laptop battery cabal: Panasonic pleads guilty to price fixing

July 19, 2013

Panasonic and its subsidiary Sanyo have agreed to plead guilty to price fixing conspiracies involving laptop battery cells and automotive parts. They will pay a total of $56.5 million in criminal fines, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said. Sanyo agreed to pay $10.7 million for the battery cells conspiracy and Panasonic will pay $45.8 million for its role in the automotive parts conspiracy, the DoJ said in a news release on Thursday. LG Chem, a manufacturer of rechargeable batteries, has also agreed to plead guilty and to pay a $1.056 million criminal fine for price fixing involving battery cells, the DoJ said. Sanyo and LG Chem were involved in a battery cell conspiracy from about April 2007 until about September 2008, it said. “The guilty pleas against Sanyo and LG Chem are the first in the department’s ongoing investigation into anticompetitive conduct in the cylindrical lithium-ion battery cell industry,” it said. Both companies conspired to fix the prices of battery cells sold worldwide for use in notebook computer battery packs, it added. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2044740/panasonic-pleads-guilty-to-laptop-battery-pack-price-fixing.html#tk.rss_all