European Commission officials raided offices belonging to Intel Corporation yesterday as part of an ongoing investigation into violations of antitrust law.
The world's biggest microchip maker confirmed that commission officials had searched several of its offices, including two plants in Britain and Germany.
Intel said its Irish operations were unaffected by the raids, which follow complaints made against Intel by its chief rival, the US company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). AMD has argued that Intel has abused its dominant position by using threats and kickbacks to computer manufacturers to help it build market share illegally.
Intel, which maintains a 90 per cent market share by income and 78 per cent market share by volume of chips, strongly denies the allegations made against it.
"Intel believes that our business practices are fair in lawful," said Marlo Thompson, Intel's European public relations manager. "It is our normal practice to fully cooperate with authorities."
The commission said the current investigation was being carried out within the framework of an ongoing competition case.
"[ EU] 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 IT firms manufacturing or selling computers," said commission spokesman Jonathan Todd.
The commission first began investigating Intel's behaviour more than five years ago, particularly focusing on its policy of offering rebates to computer manufacturers. In 2002 the commission put its enquiry on hold for a time before restarting its antitrust investigation recently.
AMD, which bases its European manufacturing headquarters in Germany, has recently increased the pressure on Intel by filing multiple antitrust law suits in several jurisdictions.
Earlier this month AMD filed a triple-damages antitrust lawsuit in the US, alleging that Intel had used threats and kickbacks in illegally building its computer chip business. AMD argues that Intel coerced 38 companies, including Dell and Sony. Last month, AMD filed two suits against Intel in Japan, seeking $55 million in damages for alleged violations of the country's antitrust laws. This followed on from a March decision by Japan's Fair Trade Commission that Intel had violated antitrust laws by offering rebates to five PC makers that agreed either not to buy or to limit their purchases of chips made by AMD.
The five computer makers were Hitachi, Sony, NEC, Fujitsu and Toshiba.
Intel's dominant position in the semiconductor market was one of the reasons cited by the Government for its failure to persuade the commission to sanction grants for investments proposed by Intel. The Government had applied to the commission to offer Intel up to €170 million in grants to support two new chip plants in Leixlip. The Government later withdrew the grant offer to Intel after receiving indications from the commission that it may not sanction the award.
