Now, Intel’s got real trouble

by Jeff Dorsch, January 10th, 2008, 12:48 pm

Forget about the European Commission. The Korean Fair Trade Commission? An afterthought. Intel has some real regulatory problems now — Andrew Cuomo, the politically ambitious attorney general of New York State, has opened an antitrust investigation into the world’s biggest chip maker.

A subpoena went out today, seeking information on whether Intel has violated state and federal antitrust laws by allegedly suppressing competition in the microprocessor market. The chief victim of these supposed monopoly practices is, of course, Advanced Micro Devices.

The Federal Trade Commission has declined to consider antitrust charges against Intel, as the Bush Administration has taken, shall we say, a lighter hand on the subject of competition among American businesses.

AG Andy Cuomo, the elder son of former Governor Mario Cuomo, unsuccessfully ran for governor of New York in 2002 and won election as the Empire State’s attorney general in 2006. His predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, used his tenure to become the regulatory scourge of Wall Street and to mount a successful campaign to be elected governor of New York. The younger Cuomo, who also served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton Administration, may have made some missteps in his political career and his personal life (he married a Kennedy, then divorced her), but he’s a savvy political operator, and getting a big settlement out of Intel — say, cash rebates for everyone who’s bought a PC in the past 15 years — could make his bones for the governor’s mansion in Albany and the White House. After all, New York has sent four governors to preside over the Potomac, including a couple of guys named Roosevelt.