The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) yesterday fined Superior Enterprises Ltd (震宇企業) for falsely claiming it had obtained exclusive distribution rights from Electrolube.
The commission said Superior Enterprises advertised on its Web site, product catalogs, product packaging and online advertisements that it was the exclusive distributor for Electrolube, a manufacturer of electro-chemicals and a division of H K Wentworth Ltd.
The company used phrases, such as “the only distributor for Electrolube from [the] UK” and “the only distributor for the best-selling products from Electrolube,” in its advertisements and wrote on its packaging, “the only distributor of Electrolube products imported from the UK,” the commission said.
However, the commission received a tip-off from another company, which provided documents to prove that it had obtained the right from Electrolube to market all of its products.
When Superior Enterprises was asked by FTC officials to provide proof that the company was the exclusive channel for Electrolube’s products, it failed to provide evidence to back up the claims made in its advertisements.
The commission fined Superior Enterprises NT$50,000 (US$1,570) for false advertising and ordered the company to immediately remove the misleading words and phrases from its Web sites, advertisements and packaging.
In related news, the FTC yesterday approved WPG Holdings Co’s (大聯大投資控股) acquisition of Yosun Industrial Corp (友尚) — a 100 percent share swap deal that was announced in March.
WPG Holdings is the largest vendor of its kind in Asia and No. 3 globally after Phoenix-based Avnet Inc and Melville, New York-based Arrow Electronics Inc.
Yosun is the second-largest semiconductor component distributor in the Asia-Pacific region. Its clients include firms such as Samsung Electronics Co, STMicroelectronics NV, Fairchild Semiconductor International Inc and Texas Instruments Inc.
The FTC said the deal complied with standards for appropriate business practices established by the Fair Trade Act (公平交易法) because the merged entity would not hamper free market competition in the semiconductor component industry.
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