EU General Court Reduces Infineon's Fine for Cartel Case -- Update

By Mauro Orru

The General Court of the European Union said Wednesday that it has ordered a reduction for a fine imposed on Infineon Technologies AG for its participation in a cartel in the smart card chip market in the European Economic Area.

The court ordered a reduction for the fine against the German chip maker to 76.9 million euros ($86.7 million) from EUR82.9 million, as the commission which imposed the original fine "took insufficient account of the limited number of the anticompetitive contacts which Infineon had with its competitors."

The commission in 2014 established the existence of a cartel in the smart card chip sector from 2003 to 2005 in which Infineon, Koninklijke Philips NV, Samsung Electronics Co. and Renesas Electronics Corp. engaged in anticompetitive practices.

The latest ruling comes as the court said the commission didn't give enough weight to the fact that Infineon participated in just 10 anticompetitive contacts out of 41 for the whole cartel.

A spokeswoman for Infineon told Dow Jones: "As we said before, Infineon is convinced that it did not violate anti-trust laws and that the decision of the commission was unfounded and furthermore in violation of fundamental principles of fair proceedings. Therefore, we had appealed against the decision of the General Court of the European Union. We will analyze the new verdict in more detail with our lawyers now."

Write to Mauro Orru at [e-mail]; @MauroOrru94

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 08, 2020 07:40 ET (11:40 GMT)

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