South Korea's LG Electronics and Samsung SDI are among the companies fined a record total of 1.47 billion euros ($1.9 billion) by the European Union antitrust regulator over price-rigging of television cathode ray tubes, authorities said Wednesday.
The European Commission fined LG Electronics 295.6 million euros and Samsung SDI 150.8 million euros, for fixing prices of now-obsolete cathode ray tubes with five other international firms over roughly a decade.
The watchdog imposed the biggest penalty on Dutch-based Philips with 313.4 million euros.
The firms illegally "fixed prices, shared markets, allocated customers between themselves and restricted their output" from 1996 until 2006 in the markets for television and computer cathode ray tubes, the commission said in a statement.
The tubes accounted for 50-70 percent of the price of screens.
The regulator said they acted as "textbook cartels" by featuring "all the worst kinds of anticompetitive behavior that are strictly forbidden to companies doing business in Europe."
The commission raided the companies in 2007.
In a statement released in Seoul, LG Electronics said it plans to decide measures to take following a close review of the commission's report. (Yonhap News)
