The last year (and particularly the last few months) of the Biden Administration brought a flurry of activity from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the life sciences space, continuing a yearslong pattern of close scrutiny and culminating most notably in the issuance of a complaint against the leading pharmacy…
To date, 2024 has not yet seen the type of mega-merger (Pfizer/Seagen) or level of agency enforcement (Sanofi/Maze or Amgen/Horizon) as 2023. But two notable investigations — one still active — show the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is continuing to closely examine life sciences transactions for both horizontal and vertical…
Despite increasingly aggressive rhetoric from the agencies, 2022 was largely characterized as “business as usual” in the antitrust world. In contrast, 2023 featured a significant step up in enforcement activity, including multiple challenged transactions and lengthy investigations in the life sciences space. As notable, many of these enforcement activities involved…
Despite the threatening rhetoric, the early years of the Biden Administration largely followed previous regimes with respect to antitrust enforcement in the life sciences space. Pharmaceutical transactions in particular encounters the expected amount of agency scrutiny, with most proceeding without an extended investigation and, in contrast to deals in the…
The third quarter in the life sciences space saw notable developments in significant agency enforcement actions: The FTC abandoned its pursuit of a novel theory and settled its Amgen/Horizon lawsuit 10 days before the scheduled preliminary injunction hearing. As detailed below, the settlement is fairly modest in scope and embraces…
Arman Oruc joined the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast to share his views on the FTC, and its impact on M&A for the pharma and biotech industry. Listen to the podcast here.
The second quarter saw significant enforcement and dealmaking in the life sciences space. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced its attempt to block Amgen/Horizon, the first such challenge to a life science transaction since 2009, and issued a second request in Pfizer’s proposed $43 billion acquisition of Seagen. In contrast,…
While a number of factors suggest that deal activity, including those with material antitrust issues, will increase throughout 2023, recent enforcement activity could potentially chill the largest transactions from moving forward. But FTC’s filing of a complaint to block Amgen/Horizon may signal a revived enforcement push for large transactions. Read…
M&A activity in the life sciences space proceeded largely as usual in 2022, with most transactions receiving expected levels of agency scrutiny and closing in the normal course despite aggressive rhetoric from new leadership at both agencies. Notably, the government has thus far not applied more novel theories of antitrust…
The third quarter in the life sciences space showed that business is generally proceeding as usual, with large pharma players successfully acquiring or licensing in clinical stage assets without running into antitrust delays. That said, even these inherently procompetitive deals appear to be receiving at least some attention from the…
