LG

LG Electronics is the Korean company known for televisions, home appliances, and phones. Before flat screens, it was also a major supplier of cathode-ray tubes, the glass picture tubes inside televisions and desktop monitors. This profile is that electronics company.

Tube makers sold to the factories that assembled the sets. The Commission found they fixed prices and divided customers, and that they did part of it in meetings they called green meetings. LG and Philips also had a shared tube business, which is why those two names sit close together in the decision, while each remained its own company.

The 2012 fines come to about €1.47 billion for the cartel as a whole. That figure is not an LG-only penalty. Households never bought a bare tube. They bought a television or a monitor with the tube cost already inside the price.

The product was the color tube for a television and the tube for a computer monitor, two lines the decision treated together.

Green meetings were competitor sessions on prices and customers, held while flat screens were already replacing the tube.

Market sharing meant the suppliers allocated who would serve which tube buyer, on top of the price agreements.

A set maker choosing a tube supplier was looking at a short list of companies that had already compared notes.

A family buying a bulky television paid the retail price, with no way to see the tube contract behind it.