European Antitrust Regulators Search Intel Offices
Antitrust investigators raided four European offices of Intel Corp. on Tuesday, seeking information in a long-running inquiry into the business tactics of the world’s biggest computer chip maker.
European Commission officials and local authorities searched Intel offices in Madrid; Milan, Italy; Munich, Germany; and Swindon, England, Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy confirmed. A commission spokesman said investigators also searched the offices of computer makers and distributors.
The European Commission began investigating Intel four years ago but lost momentum until archrival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. offered new information last year. In this country, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD filed an antitrust lawsuit against Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel, alleging that the company illegally used its market dominance to bully computer makers into using only Intel chips in their products.
European competition officials, “accompanied by officials from national competition authorities, are conducting inspections of several premises of Intel in Europe as well as a number of [information technology] firms manufacturing or selling computers,” European Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said. “The investigations are being carried out within the framework of an ongoing competition case.”
Intel said it was cooperating with investigators. “We have a long history of cooperation with regulators, including the staff of the EC,” Mulloy said. “We have been cooperating with the EC on this current investigation for more than four years. During this period, we provided the staff of the commission with tens of thousands of pages of documents and hundreds of hours of meetings and interviews.”
AMD said it supported Tuesday’s action. The “dawn raids should come as good news to consumers across Europe,” said Thomas M. McCoy, AMD’s executive vice president for legal affairs and chief administrative officer. “Every computer user has a strong interest in ensuring that the full truth about Intel’s anti-competitive abuses is revealed and corrected.”
Intel has denied AMD’s claims, but Michael Cohen, director of research for Pacific American Securities, said AMD’s allegations deserved scrutiny.
“Intel has an enormous clout with customers, and every customer is trying to be on Intel’s good side to get slightly better deals than their competitors,” said Cohen, who follows Intel and AMD and owns AMD shares. “And you’re talking about an industry with very thin margins.”
Reuters was used in compiling this report.
