FBI rifles firm's ex-files for its conspiracy theory.

• Position: SGL Carbon Corp

SGL Carbon Corp.'s top executives were in France for a meeting in June 1997 when a dozen FBI agents, some armed, raided the electrode maker's Charlotte offices. They seized its server, then rifled through files, searching for evidence of a price-fixing ring.

Since that day, SGL Carbon's three U.S. competitors have struck deals with the U.S. Justice Department, conceding they worked together to set prices on graphite electrodes, which steel makers use in smelting furnaces. The smallest, Pittsburgh-based Carbide/Graphite Group Inc., flipped first and got a slap on the wrist. In February Ridgeville, S.C.-based Showa Denko Carbon Inc. agreed to a $29 million fine. Then in April, the market leader, Danbury, Conn.-based Ucar International Inc., got a $110 million fine, a record for antitrust.

That leaves SGL Carbon, the second-largest, as the holdout. It has not been charged with anything, but the Justice Department investigation continues. "We'd kind of like to get this behind us," President Wayne Burgess says, "but we feel a little concerned about pleading a plea bargain for something we didn't really do."

In the late '80s and early '90s, the industry "went bankrupt, for all practical purposes," he says. Manufacturers simply raised prices to recoup losses. Ucar, though, has admitted that the competitors...