Hitachi is in hot water in the EU over a complaint about price fixing of power transformers. The company said it had received a letter from the EU which accused ABB, Areva, Toshiba and other companies of getting together to fix the price of power transformers.

Under European Union law, companies can be fined as much as 10 percent of annual sales for breaking antitrust rules, and lately it has been getting tetchy about such matters, just ask Microsoft.

Hitachi gets about 32 percent of its revenue from the power and industrial systems business, which includes transformers, high-speed trains and construction equipment.

Toshiba has not commented further on the matter other than to say it has got the EU's missive.