Trade Resources Industry Views Saveri Launch Price-Fixing Allegations Against More Than a Dozen Electronics Manufacturers

Saveri Launch Price-Fixing Allegations Against More Than a Dozen Electronics Manufacturers

SAN FRANCISCO — Bay Area plaintiffs attorney Joseph Saveri has launched price-fixing allegations against more than a dozen electronics manufacturers over tiny electrical components found in nearly all household technology.

Among the defendants listed in the 48-page, class action complaint are Panasonic Corp. and Samsung Electro-Mechanics. The companies make electrolytic capacitors, the building blocks of electrical circuits found by the hundreds in everything from smartphones to cars.

Saveri represents Chip-Tech Ltd., a New York company that sells capacitors and other electronic products. The suit accuses defendants of conspiring to fix prices after global capacitor revenues began to drop in 2000.

“To slow any further decline in demand, and to ensure that sales of their respective product portfolios would remain profitable, defendants agreed that price competition … had to cease,” Saveri wrote in the complaint, filed late Friday in the Northern District of California.

Defendants have been secretly scheming to control market prices for roughly a decade, according to Saveri. “As a result, plaintiff and the class paid artificially inflated prices for the capacitors they directly purchased from defendants,” he wrote.

Collusion in the capacitor market has attracted the attention of law enforcement locally and overseas, according to the complaint, which cites an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as investigations and raids by agencies in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Europe.

Panasonic and Samsung did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment Monday.

Source: http://www.capacitorindustry.com/suit-accuses-capacitor-manufacturers-of-price-fixing
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Suit Accuses Capacitor Manufacturers of Price-Fixing