EU court says it can probe M&As even when one party has no European operations A European court has said it can examine M&As among tech and science companies even if one of the parties has no operations in the EU. The judgement from the European Union's General Court found that it had the right to look into and rule on the planned merger between US biotech firms Illumina and Grail. Illumina is a global …
It's not even the kind of extraterratoriality that the US routinely goes in for (Magnitzky Act, etc.) as one of the companies is based in Europe. It's actually a quite simple test: could the proposed merger limit competition in Europe by removing a potential competitor?
Quite the reverse!
Illumina is a huge name in DNA sequencing technology. I don't know anything about Grail, but if their test uses that sort of technology to determine whether your disease is an easy to cure cheap one, or a nasty expensive one, well that's the sort of prospect that gets the healthcare capitalists slobbering all down their silk ties, and makes countries with public healthcare systems very nervous.
I thought the same. I could see a couple attempts if the thing getting bought doesn't have operations, because then the buyer theoretically wouldn't be changing anything about the European market, but it also implies that they might be expanding those operations into the EU, so there's still cases for regulation. It probably does make it harder to suggest a problem, but I see no reason it should prevent them from having authority.
If the buyer was European and was buying foreign firms in order to become a monopoly or prevent other competitors entering the market that would be a reasonable concern.
Obviously if the buyer is totally foreign but buying a European operation this is investigated, otherwise a buyer just needs to form a front company outside the Eu, claim that this entity is doing the deal and has no presence in the Eu and so is free to do anything
That's rich considering the world record holder for revenue is Prilosec, manufactured by Astra Zeneca (Britain and Sweden.)
..which is better known as Omeprazole, a molecule discovered in the late seventies. They added a well-patented time-release coating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omeprazole#History
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1023326369679910840
World's largest consumer of pharmaceuticals by cost is... US Medicare.
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