HP’s Korean Offices Raided as Part of Price Fixing Investigation
The Korean Fair Trade Commission has raided HP’s Seoul offices on Friday over suspicions of price fixing. They took various computer records, documents and questioned staff. HP is suspected of colluding with other big players in the market, such as IBM and Oracle. The FTC’s aim is to ensure that big companies don’t abuse their dominant positions in the Korean market to prevent damage to consumers and other companies. This is especially important here, because Korean companies are heavily dependent on the likes of HP for their computer equipment and are therefore vulnerable to any abuses by those companies.
“Its true that FTC officials visited our office last Friday,” said HP spokeswoman Baek Min-jung. But she refused to elaborate, calling the ongoing probe “routine,” pointing out the FTC vowed earlier this year to tighten its monitoring over multinational IT firms.
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