South Korea's anti-trust watchdog has launched a probe into Samsung SDI as part of an international investigation into alleged price-fixing, South Korean officials said yesterday.
The Fair Trade Commission is investigating allegations that Samsung SDI colluded with foreign rivals to fix the price of cathode ray tubes (CRTs) for televisions.
"It is part of an international probe into alleged price-fixing this week. We are cooperating with the Fair Trade Commission," a Samsung SDI spokesman said.
The commission refused to comment.
Samsung SDI, which is a sister firm of industry giant Samsung Electronics Co, is one of the world's largest makers of plasma display panels.
It has rapidly shifted its business focus to flat-panel screens and away from traditional CRT systems.
In Japan on Thursday, a CRT subsidiary of the electronics giant Matsushita Electric Industrial Co was raided by anti-trust regulators.
Japan's Fair Trade Commission conducted an on-site inspection of MT Picture Display Co, a 100 percent subsidiary of Matsushita, said Akira Kadota, a spokesman for Matsushita, the Osaka-based maker of Panasonic-brand products.
Kadota said he could not comment why the subsidiary was searched, citing ongoing investigations.Fair Trade Commission officials were not immediately available for comment.
MT Picture Display is suspected of fixing prices for CRTs with other manufacturers in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, Japanese business daily Nikkei reported yesterday.
The European Commission also confirmed on Thursday that its officials had carried out a number of unannounced inspections at CRT manufacturers over suspected cartel activity.
Authorities in the US were also involved in the investigation, Nikkei reported.
The CRT manufacturers are suspected of operating an international cartel since 2005 or earlier, it said.
Demand for the tubes -- used in traditional box TVs -- is shrinking amid increasing sales of flat TVs.
But global sales of CRTs remain strong because of demand in developing countries and are estimated at ?500 billion (US$4.43 billion), according to estimates in the Japanese media.
According to Japanese industry estimates, some 60 percent of global demand for color television sets was for CRT models in the year to March 2008.
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