Canon Stock Price Drops to More Than Two-Month Low After EU Threatens Huge Fine

[Mikehit]

Relevant topic, for sure, but how can we avoid politics?

Because it is nothing to do with politics. It is about law and business and so far I haven't seen anyone blaming pinko/fascist/liberal protectionist policies which is fine by me

 

[Ozarker]

Relevant topic, for sure, but how can we avoid politics?

Because it is nothing to do with politics.

It has everything to do with politics. The EU is a political entity. The politicians make the laws or rules. The EU is the entity imposing the fines. It is all about politics no matter what company is being levied.

 

[sanj]

Ummm.....where is there any mention of the lack of 4K in this article?

Hahahaha. ;D ;D

 

[Mikehit]

Relevant topic, for sure, but how can we avoid politics?

Because it is nothing to do with politics.

It has everything to do with politics. The EU is a political entity. The politicians make the laws or rules. The EU is the entity imposing the fines. It is all about politics no matter what company is being levied.

OK, then. Let's say it is possible to discuss the impact of the legislation without entering into politics.

 

[scrup]

More money for the EU since the UK is leaving.

All these regulations the EU imposes to safe guard the dummies drives the cost up for everyone else.

 

[grainier]

IMO, Euro Commissars should stick to measuring babana curvatures.

 

[Talys]

Yeah, frankly, I'm a little amazed that the rest of the world has put up with the EU's ginormous fines. I'm a little surprised that there haven't been retaliatory fines in other countries against EU manufacturers.

Not that I think companies should get away with doing whatever they want and ignore local laws, but the EU fines seem draconian... and suspiciously often against American and Asian manufacturers. It makes me think protectionism, in another guise.

 

[Mikehit]

Yeah, frankly, I'm a little amazed that the rest of the world has put up with the EU's ginormous fines. I'm a little surprised that there haven't been retaliatory fines in other countries against EU manufacturers.

Not that I think companies should get away with doing whatever they want and ignore local laws, but the EU fines seem draconian... and suspiciously often against American and Asian manufacturers. It makes me think protectionism, in another guise.

Try reading the actual article instead of jumping on your high horse. This is a preliminary finding and the fine is threatened. The EU has identified as way it thinks the company is (shall we say) interpreting the process to enable it to act as though it had bought the company before it actually had. This is quote from Fujifilm in the linked article (you know, the camera company asnd nto an EU shill as far as I know)

Rival bidder Fujifilm Holdings Corp had criticized it as a "mockery of the law".

What scale of fine do you think was appropriate? If you believe the fine is excessive you have to have some idea of what is reasonable. Or is it that it has a lot of zeros in it?

 

[LDS]

Not that I think companies should get away with doing whatever they want and ignore local laws, but the EU fines seem draconian... and suspiciously often against American and Asian manufacturers. It makes me think protectionism, in another guise.

You may have missed this, for example: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-1208_en.htm, or this http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-1741_en.htm. Not every fine gets the press attention, but European companies are routinely fined for breaking the rules.

It is true that for several reasons EU adopted a far stronger stance on competition. Also, many rules has been strengthened after the 2008 crisis attempting to avoid another.

And what about US going after Takata executives for the exploding airbags? A Chinese/US competitor will benefit from Takata bankruptcy. Meanwhile in Japan there's been a string of scandals (i.e. Olympus and Toshiba) - not the EU is immune, see the Italian and Spanish banks that went bankrupt (and external interventions needed EU approval).

Note that the fine Canon should pay if found infringing the rules is not yet set - it may be "up to 10%", but it may be far lower. Anyway, when companies have profits of several billions, a €100,000, or even a €1,000,000 fine is just a slap on the wrist.

 

[LonelyBoy]

And the US fined Samsung, and around and around and around we go. Anyone acting like this is behavior unique to the EU, or a result of Socialism! is ill-informed.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

The Europeans are always trying to levy big fines on foreign companies in order to prop up their currency. Somehow, all European companies never have a issue and are never fined.

Come off it - that is complete and utter garbage! European banks have been and are still being fined tens of billions by the US over issues from sub-prime to currency exchange rigging. Have you forgotten how BP was taken to the cleaners for many tens of billions by the Obama administration for the Gulf of Mexico incident, and Obama called it British Petroleum, an obsolete name? And what about VW being fined over the diesel scandal?

Yes, the US does fine companies doing business in the US and causing financial harm to citizens and companies. In the case of the banks, US citizens were directly affected and lost money due to the rigging and other issues. The banks have branches and do business in the US. BP also caused physical damage in the US, and most affected parties never totally recovered their losses.

Canon has physical Offices in Europe, and so does Toshiba, so they can be fined for damage to citizens or companies. The part about any damage to European citizens/companies escapes me, but lawyers can always twist things.

My Comment was more to the effect that we never see the European commission levying huge fines against European companies, they mostly exist as a source of income. I have nothing against any actions that have caused damage to European citizens or any country for that matter.

I remember when they fined Microsoft a billion or more dollars because Microsoft did not make their software open, and then piled on more because some professor could not understand the documentation. Apparently the lack of published source code for the software caused a lot of issues for Russian Hackers.

 

[Talys]

Yeah, frankly, I'm a little amazed that the rest of the world has put up with the EU's ginormous fines. I'm a little surprised that there haven't been retaliatory fines in other countries against EU manufacturers.

Not that I think companies should get away with doing whatever they want and ignore local laws, but the EU fines seem draconian... and suspiciously often against American and Asian manufacturers. It makes me think protectionism, in another guise.

Try reading the actual article instead of jumping on your high horse. This is a preliminary finding and the fine is threatened. The EU has identified as way it thinks the company is (shall we say) interpreting the process to enable it to act as though it had bought the company before it actually had. This is quote from Fujifilm in the linked article (you know, the camera company asnd nto an EU shill as far as I know)

Rival bidder Fujifilm Holdings Corp had criticized it as a "mockery of the law".

What scale of fine do you think was appropriate? If you believe the fine is excessive you have to have some idea of what is reasonable. Or is it that it has a lot of zeros in it?

I was not referring to specifically Canon. The EU has levied many huge antitrust-type fines (billions of dollars) against a number of non-European tech companies. I'm not sure what warnings and remedial steps the EU takes to get there. I don't think many people would argue that the EU levies significantly larger fines in significantly more cases, than other first-world areas, like the North America (including Mexico), South-East Asia (Korea, Japan, Taiwan, etc.) and Australia.

I'm not counting, but I rarely see European tech, manufacturing, or automotive giants get hit fines of that scale. For example, I'm thinking Siemens, Nokia, or Mercedes-Benz -- as opposed to Microsoft or Google -- or Canon.

Besides, I'm not saying that they aren't within their rights to do so; only that it's surprising that companies like Microsoft and Google (or Canon) haven't lobbied their home countries for reciprocal fines of "misbehaving" European giants of their industry.

Then again, I suppose, putting aside Canon for a moment, for most of those really big tech companies (which are much wealthier than Canon) a couple of billion here or there isn't a big deal, especially in Europe, because they can't repatriate that money without paying massive taxes anyhow.

 

[Mikehit]

I'm not counting, but I rarely see European tech, manufacturing, or automotive giants get hit fines of that scale. For example, I'm thinking Siemens, Nokia, or Mercedes-Benz -- as opposed to Microsoft or Google -- or Canon.

Maybe because the biggest companies are US and Asia-based.

Then again, I suppose, putting aside Canon for a moment, for most of those really big tech companies (which are much wealthier than Canon) a couple of billion here or there isn't a big deal, especially in Europe, because they can't repatriate that money without paying massive taxes anyhow.

I guess that's more the explanation - making the fine bear some relation to the size of the company and the benefits they accrued as a result of the naughty naughty things they did.

 

[LDS]

I remember when they fined Microsoft a billion or more dollars because Microsoft did not make their software open, and then piled on more because some professor could not understand the documentation. Apparently the lack of published source code for the software caused a lot of issues for Russian Hackers.

You're wrong. MS was never fined because its software was not open. It was fined because it actively denied interoperability with other systems. The result was it had to publish the relevant specifications (not the code) so other systems can communicate with Microsoft systems. Also, MS can still ask for licenses and royalties - but was fined again because it set unreasonably high royalties.

If your Windows, Mac or Linux can easily use SMB to read and write files to a NAS, regardless of the operating system, thank that EU ruling. Of if your Android phone can talk to an Exchange server.

Then there were the Internet Explorer issue. Again, without the EU you wouldn't have had Firefox and Chrome.

Hackers have no issue to break into system even without source code. Vulnerabilities are found in a different way.

 

[LDS]

I'm not counting, but I rarely see European tech, manufacturing, or automotive giants get hit fines of that scale. For example, I'm thinking Siemens, Nokia, or Mercedes-Benz -- as opposed to Microsoft or Google -- or Canon.

Maybe because you don't follow that news - it depends what news outlets you follow. Some well known names will hit the newslines, other less known ones won't.

Read one of the links I published before, "Antitrust: Commission fines banks € 1.49 billion for participating in cartels in the interest rate derivatives industry". Among the fined banks are Deutsche Bank, Société Générale, RBS.

Or this one: "The European Commission has found that MAN, Volvo/Renault, Daimler, Iveco, and DAF broke EU antitrust rules. These truck makers colluded for 14 years on truck pricing and on passing on the costs of compliance with stricter emission rules. The Commission has imposed a record fine of € 2 926 499 000." (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-2582_en.htm, Daimler is the Mercedes-Benz parent company).

Siemens was fined for 400 millions euros in 2007 (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-07-80_en.htm?locale=en).