European Commission comes down hard on DRAM cartel

Several of the biggest names in DRAM have been fined for colluding on prices

The European Commission has fined a selection of DRAM memory firms a total of €331m as part of an anti-trust settlement in a pricing cartel investigation.

The EC named Micron, Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, NEC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Elpida and Nanya in its summary. Only Micron escaped being fined, thanks to the help it gave investigators in revealing the existence of the cartel.

An EC statement said: "Cartel settlements allow the Commission to speed up investigations, free up resources to deal with other cases and generally improve the efficiency of its anti-trust enforcement."

EC competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia described the settlement decision as "another milestone in the Commission's anti-cartel enforcement".

"By acknowledging their participation in a cartel the companies have allowed the Commission to bring this long-running investigation to a close and to free up resources to investigate other suspected cartels," he said.

"As the procedure is applied to new cases it is expected to speed up investigations significantly."

The DRAM companies were given a 10 per cent reduction on their payments, along with other concessions, in return for their openness.

Samsung received the largest fine at €145m, while Infineon must pay €56.7m and Hynix €51.5m. Nanya got the lowest fine at €1.8m.

DRAM sales in the first quarter of 2010 reached $9.5bn (£6.6bn), according to recent figures from Gartner, and Samsung is at the top of the earnings pile.