The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has gotten into the crosshairs of one of America’s largest chip suppliers for the wireless and broadband comms industry. It’s brought a case against (and settled with) Broadcom, the publicly-traded chipmaker, with accusations of illegally monopolizing markets in certain ways.

• The FTC accused Broadcom of illegally monopolizing markets with exclusive chip supply contracts with its customers that required them to purchase only Broadcom products and not from its rivals.

• According to the FTC, Broadcom entered such exclusive agreements with at least 10 major customers and thus created barriers for rivals trying to compete with the company.

• Also, Broadcom is accused of leveraging its power in some monopolized chip product segments to coerce customers to sign exclusivity contracts in other product segments. 

• With the charges against it, Broadcom agreed to a settlement that prohibits it from having such exclusivity agreements with its customers and also refrain from retaliating against customers for doing business with its rivals. The terms of the settlement must still be approved by a court.

• Last October, Broadcom settled a similar case with antitrust authorities of the European Union, and now with the US FTC. It must have really done much to piss off regulators both in its home base and abroad.

• The settlement with Broadcom was announced just a day after the FTC voted to pursue antitrust cases more proactively under the leadership of its new chair Lina Khan. Khan herself didn’t participate in the FTC vote to settle the antitrust case with Broadcom instead of heading to the courts.

• Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) closed trading on Friday at $468.17 per share, with a market cap of $192bn.

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