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January 21,
2005
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DuPont Dow Settles Rubber Litigation
Elastomers joint venture will pay government and customers |
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MICHAEL MCCOY
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DuPont Dow Elastomers has reached a plea agreement with the Department of Justice that includes an $84 million fine resolving all criminal charges stemming from an investigation into the fixing of polychloroprene rubber prices.
Separately, the elastomers joint venture has agreed to settle a federal class-action antitrust lawsuit over ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM), another synthetic rubber, for an undisclosed amount.
The settlements are the latest in a string of corporate payouts related to the government investigation of rubber price fixing. Earlier this month, Zeon Chemicals agreed to pay $10.5 million to settle a government probe into acrylonitrile-butadiene rubber, while Crompton agreed to pay $97 million to settle class-action suits in synthetic rubber and rubber additives. DuPont Dow settled a class-action suit related to polychloroprene in June 2004, agreeing to pay customers $36 million.
DuPont earlier reached a deal with Dow to pay all joint-venture-related antitrust costs up to $150 million and more than 75% of any costs beyond that. DuPont took a pretax charge of $150 million in the first quarter of 2004 to cover such costs and now says it will take another pretax charge of $118 million.
DuPont and Dow finalized plans to break up the elastomers joint venture earlier this month.
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