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Intel's business operation might be in trouble if such ruling will be set. Huge amount of fine and forced changes can make things difficult for them.
2 commentsMonday, May 11, 2009
By Doug Caverly
The European Commission is set to make Wednesday a fairly important day in Intel's corporate life, according to multiple reports. Unfortunately for the chipmaker, Wednesday will be important in a very negative sense, as it's liable to face a huge fine and be forced to change some business practices.
The European Commission accused Intel of anticompetitive behavior (mostly directed towards AMD) quite some time ago. Wednesday's ruling is going to stem from that.
As for what exactly will transpire, well, remember how the European Commission fined Microsoft about $690 million in 2007? Thomas Graf, an antitrust lawyer at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, told Matthew Newman, "There is a good chance that there could be a record fine for an abuse of dominance case, and that it could exceed the fine against Microsoft."
It's expected that the European Commission will also make Intel stop offering rebates to computer makers and retailers.
This isn't obviously isn't good news for Intel. The dramatic development may represent a bad sign in Microsoft's eyes, as well, since the European Commission has been investigating it for anticompetitive behavior where Internet Explorer is concerned.
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Obama and antitrust
Obama's assistant attorney general for antitrust (at DOJ) has said the administration plans to be much more active in enforcement of the antitrust laws than the Bush administration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/business/11antitrust.html?hpw
Given that Obama received substantial support from Silicon Valley tech companies during the 2008 campaign, I wonder how this will all play out for the tech sector? I suspect our antitrust policies will move closer to the Europeans under Obama.