Pharma merger cleared unconditionally by the European Commission
On 05 December the European Commission cleared the acquisition of Recordati by CVC, owner of several portfolio companies active in the pharmaceutical sector, including Doc Generici and Alvogen. The transaction was cleared in Phase I without remedies being required. The European Commission focused the analysis on specific markets in Iceland, Italy and Romania, where the transaction created overlaps.
The European Commission found that the transaction would not raise concerns because the merging parties were not close competitors, despite the fact that the merged entity had significant combined market shares in some of these markets. In particular, in these markets, one of the parties supplied a branded originator medicine, while the other party supplied a generic version of the drug. Given the specific features of prescription and reimbursement practices in these markets, the European Commission considered that generic and originator products did not compete closely with each other and that the remaining generic suppliers would continue imposing a strong competitive constraint on the merged entity.
RBB Economics assisted CVC, alongside Clifford Chance.
