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China finds 12 Japanese firms guilty of price rigging

HONG KONG — Chinese regulators said yesterday that they had found 12 Japanese auto parts and bearings manufacturers guilty of conspiring to rig prices in the Chinese market, and had imposed a total of US$200 million (S$249 million) in anti-trust fines on 10 of them.

HONG KONG — Chinese regulators said yesterday that they had found 12 Japanese auto parts and bearings manufacturers guilty of conspiring to rig prices in the Chinese market, and had imposed a total of US$200 million (S$249 million) in anti-trust fines on 10 of them.

The fines, a record for China’s increasingly vigorous enforcement of anti-trust laws, is also notable for being levied exclusively against Japanese companies. It coincides with deteriorating diplomatic relations between Tokyo and Beijing over territorial disputes and how events in World War II are remembered and commemorated. The case involves eight Japanese auto parts makers and four bearings manufacturers.

The official Xinhua news agency reported the eight auto parts makers as Hitachi, Denso, Aisan, Mitsubishi Electric, Mitsuba, Yazaki, Furukawa and Sumitomo, while the four bearing makers are Nachi, NSK, JTEKT and NTN.

One of the auto parts manufacturers, Hitachi Automotive Systems, and one of the bearings manufacturers, the Nachi-Fujikoshi Corporation, were exempted from fines because the Chinese regulatory agency, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said that they had reported monopolistic agreements to the authorities and provided evidence.

The fines for the 10 other companies ranged from about 30 million yuan (S$6.9 million) to 290 million yuan, Xinhua reported. The NDRC, China’s top economic policy agency, clearly signalled in a news release announcing the fines that it was engaged in further anti-trust cases.

“The National Development and Reform Commission will pursue clues of other illegalities that were found during this investigation, as it continues to carry out investigations to ensure fair enforcement, maintain fair competition in the market, protect the legitimate rights and interests of operators and consumers and create a favourable environment for economic and social development,” the release said. Xinhua reported an NDRC anti-monopoly official as saying that Chinese inspectors began investigations into the 12 Japanese companies in April this year, almost three years after Japanese anti-monopoly agency probes in 2010 and 2011.

The eight Japanese auto parts makers had frequently met in Japan from January 2000 to February 2010, Xinhua reported, to negotiate prices and implement agreements on quoted prices for orders from China.

The four bearing makers had also met in Japan and Shanghai from 2000 to June 2011 and conspired on the time and scope of price hikes for bearing products sold in China. Xinhua said the car components were sold to manufacturers Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Suzuki and Ford to produce about 20 types of cars in China. A few of the Japanese companies began stepping forward on Tuesday to acknowledge that they had incurred fines. NSK, which was fined 174.9 million yuan, filed a statement to the Japanese stock exchange on Tuesday, saying the company has been fully cooperating with the NDRC investigation. “We express our sincere regret for the concern this matter has caused our shareholders, customers and other stakeholders,” Xinhua reported NSK as saying.

The Japan Auto Parts Industries Association said yesterday it did not have a statement on the fines. The scale of the fines and the decision to impose them on entirely foreign companies underline the Chinese government’s eagerness to pursue anti-trust cases, often with an emphasis on challenging multinational companies.

The NDRC is separately investigating numerous foreign automakers and trying to determine whether they colluded with dealers to compel customers to buy expensive replacement parts from the automakers’ own factories, instead of allowing customers to choose replacement parts from independent parts manufacturers. AGENCIES

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