South Korean chipmaker Hynix Semiconductor Inc. has agreed to plead guilty to price fixing and is facing a $185m (£142m) fine in the US.
In a plea filed in San Francisco, Hynix admitted conspiring with other companies to fix prices of popular computer memory products.
The fine is the third largest imposed in a criminal case by the Justice Department's antitrust division.
Hynix acknowledged that it fixed prices between April 1999 and June 2002.
This is the second admission by a computer chips firm during a price-faxing probe that began in 2002.
Infineon Technologies AG of Germany agreed to pay a $160m (£122.5m) fine back in September.
The main victims of price fixing have been computer giants such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Gateway which use Hynix's products in PCs, printers, mobile phones and many other electronic platforms.
The US market for these products was worth $7.7bn last year. |
