merger remedies

February 10, 2018

FTC Says No More Divestitures of Complex Pipeline Products to Resolve Future Competition Concerns in Pharmaceutical Mergers

On February 2, 2018, Bruce Hoffman, the Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC”) acting Director of the Bureau of Competition, announced at the Global Competition Review Seventh Annual Antitrust Law Leaders Forum that the FTC will no longer accept divestitures of inhalant and injectable pipeline drugs in pharmaceutical mergers. Historically, the FTC had accepted divestiture of pipeline asset to remedy potential competition concerns. Hoffman said that the FTC is making changes to how it resolves anticompetitive pharmaceutical mergers because past divestitures of assets in the research and development pipeline had a high failure rate for inhalants and injectables, which are known to be difficult and complex to manufacture.

The past history of problems with divestitures in this area indicated to the FTC that divesting ongoing manufacturing assets rather than pipeline assets that have not come to market places greater risk of failure on the merging firms rather than consumers. Accordingly, in situations in which the parties to the transaction own both an established inhalant or injectable that is currently being manufactured and an overlapping pipeline inhalant or injectable, the FTC will seek a divestiture of the manufactured product that is already on the market. The FTC, for example, may require the divestiture of contract manufacturing capabilities rather than other assets, such as research and development assets.

The FTC is taking the stance because of an internal study that revealed that the rate of failure for divestitures of complex pipeline products was “startlingly high”. Apparently, divestiture buyers have had difficulty in actually getting the complex pipeline assets to market. Not surprisingly, a divestiture buyer could struggle to reliably manufacture a complex pharmaceutical product, which harms its ability to ultimately bring the product to market. Indeed, all kinds of things can go wrong when trying to launch a complex pharmaceutical product. For instance, the divestiture buyer of pipeline assets could have difficulty obtaining final FDA approvals including the OK to actually manufacture the product.

November 21, 2017

Enforcement over Regulation: New Antitrust Cop Sets High Bar for Behavioral Remedies

by Doyle, Barlow & Mazard PLLC

On November 16, 2017, Makan Delrahim, recently confirmed as Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”), delivered a speech on the relationship between antitrust as law enforcement and his goal of reducing regulation.

Delrahim explained that effective antitrust enforcement lessens the need for market regulations and that behavioral commitments imposing restrictions on the conduct of the merged firm represents a form of government regulation and oversight on what should preferably be a free market.

Criticizing the early Obama administration for entering into several behavioral consent decrees that allowed illegal vertical mergers such as Comcast/NBCU, Google/ITA, and LiveNation/TicketMaster to proceed, Delrahim said there is bipartisan agreement that behavioral conditions have been inadequate. He shares the same skepticism that John Kwoka, a law professor and economist who previously served in various capacities at the Federal Trade Commission, Antitrust Division, and Federal Communications Commission, and American Antitrust Institute (AAI) President Diana Moss have about using regulatory solutions to address antitrust violations. Specifically, Delrahim agrees with them that “allowing the merger and then requiring the merged firm to ignore the incentives inherent in its integrated structure is both paradoxical and likely difficult to achieve.”

May 19, 2016

DOJ Approves Charter’s Acquisition of TWC With Behavioral Conditions

by Doyle, Barlow & Mazard PLLC

On April 25, 2016, the DOJ entered into settlement agreement approving Charter Communications, Inc.’s (“Charter”) acquisition of Time Warner Cable Inc. (“TWC”) and its related acquisition of Bright House Networks, LLC to create New Charter as long as the parties agreed to certain behavioral conditions.

DOJ’s Vertical Concerns Related to the Creation of New Charter

New Charter became the second largest cable company and third largest Multichannel Video Programming Distributor (“MVPD”). MVPDs include cable companies such as Comcast, TWC and Charter, but also direct broadcast satellite providers (i.e., DirectTV and Dish Network) and telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon.