Antitrust Lawyer Blog Commentary on Current Developments

Articles Tagged with future competition

On April 27, 2018, the FTC announced that Amneal Pharmaceuticals LLC (“Amneal”) may complete its acquisition of an equity share in Impax Laboratories Inc. (“Impax”) so long as Impax divests its rights and assets for ten products to three separate companies.

The FTC concluded that the proposed acquisition would have reduced competition in three markets where both Amneal and Impax competed: (1) generic desipramine hydrochloride tablets; (2) generic ezetimibe and simvastatin immediate release (“IR”) tablets; and (3) generic felbamate tablets.

The FTC also concluded that the proposed acquisition would reduce future competition in seven markets where Amneal or Impax is a current competitor and the other would have been likely to enter the market absent the acquisition: (1) generic aspirin and dipyridamole extended release (“ER”) capsules; (2) generic azelastine nasal spray; (3) generic diclofenac sodium and misoprostol delayed release (“DR”) tablets; (4) generic erythromycin tablets; (5) generic fluocinonide-E cream; (6) generic methylphenidate hydrochloride ER tablets; and (7) generic olopatadine hydrochloride nasal spray.

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.

On May 29, 2015, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) issued an administrative complaint alleging that Steris Corporation’s (“Steris”) proposed $1.9 billion acquisition of Synergy Health plc (“Synergy”) would violate the antitrust laws by significantly reducing future competition in regional markets for sterilization of products using radiation, particularly gamma or x-ray radiation.

Background

On October 13, 2014, Steris, headquartered in Mentor, Ohio, announced its intention to acquire Synergy, headquartered in the United Kingdom.  On January 9, 2015, the parties received request for additional information and documentary material (“second requests”).  On April 30, 2015, the parties announced that they certified compliance and entered into a timing agreement where they agreed to close the combination before June 2, 2015, unless the FTC closes the investigation before June 2nd.

On April 27, 2015, the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) Antitrust Division released a statement regarding Applied Materials Inc. (“AMAT”) and Tokyo Electron’s (“TEL”) joint announcement that they abandoned their merger.  The Antitrust Division’s statement indicates that the transaction was blocked because the combination would have diminished innovation.  In other words, the Antitrust Division was concerned about the potential loss of head to head competition in the development of future cutting edge semiconductor products and made no allegation that the combined firm would have monopolized any existing or actual product market.  The Antitrust Division’s tough stance against AMAT indicates that it is willing to scrutinize and challenge deals that raise longer-term anticompetitive concerns related to future competition even if there is no past pricing evidence that may predict that the merger will result in higher prices regarding actual products.

Background

On September 24, 2013, AMAT and TEL announced a definitive agreement to merge via an all-stock combination, which valued the new combined company at approximately $29 billion.  The companies claimed that securing regulatory clearances should not be a problem because their product offerings were highly complementary with few overlaps.  Indeed, AMAT was strong in markets where Tokyo Electron was not and vice versa.  In areas, where they directly competed, the combined shares were low.  Nevertheless, the transaction would have combined AMAT, the largest semiconductor equipment supplier in the world, with TEL, the third largest equipment supplier.

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