‘EU will fine Philips for price agreements on SIM card chips’

EU antitrust investigators are seeking to fine Philips for illegal price-fixing on chips for, among other things, smart cards. Samsung and Infineon previously announced that they would be tackled by the EU about this.

The EU must have made a decision on penalties for the cartel before September, otherwise the statute of limitations threatens. Fines may now follow before the end of next month, Bloomberg sources say. Philips would try to stretch the investigation by pointing out gaps in the evidence. Philips is one of three companies risking a fine. Renesas would be out of luck because it brought the matter before the EU.

The other two companies, Samsung and Infineon, already announced last year that they were the subject of EU investigation into banned price fixing. Those agreements related to the prices of smart card chips, such as those for SIM, bank and identity cards. The chips were made by the semiconductor branch of Philips, which got a name change to NXP in 2006. In 2010, Philips sold its remaining stake in its former chip subsidiary NXP. At the beginning of 2009, the European Commission already announced that it had its sights on the sector for smart card chips. Attempts to settle the matter with Philips, Samsung and Infineon would have come to nothing.

Samsung and Infineon were also under fire in the EU in 2010 for prohibited price fixing; then it was about cartel formation on the dram market and fines totaling 331 million euros were imposed.