Here are some of the developments in antitrust news this past week that we found interesting and are following.

Dow Chemical settles price-fixing case after Justice Scalia’s death. Dow Chemical has agreed to pay $835 million to settle a decade-long lawsuit on price fixing, saying that the death of Justice Antonin Scalia lessened its chances of overturning the verdict at the Supreme Court.  Dow, which is in the process of merging with Dupont, said on Friday that it decided to settle, without admitting any wrongdoing, citing “growing political uncertainties due to recent events within the Supreme Court.”  Dow had filed a petition in the Supreme Court arguing that a 2013 class-action judgment that Dow had conspired to artificially inflate polyurethane prices violated class action law in multiple ways, particularly with respect to two rulings authored by Justice Scalia, one in 2011 favoring Wal-Mart Stores and another in 2013 favoring Comcast.

Honeywell Persists in Pursuit of United Technologies. Honeywell has made clear that it is not walking away from its proposed takeover of United Technologies, as a potential battle between the industrial giants became more public on Friday.  In publishing an 11-page pitch to United Technologies on the merits of a merger, Honeywell sought to sway shareholders of its competitor.  Later on Friday, United Technologies issued its latest rebuttal, again contending that a merger of the two—which would yield a nearly $160 billion conglomerate whose offerings run from building cooling systems to advanced jet engines—would never survive antitrust scrutiny.

EU halts Halliburton, Baker Hughes deal review, awaits details. European Union antitrust regulators have halted their scrutiny of U.S. oilfield services provider Halliburton’s proposed takeover of Baker Hughes because the companies failed to provide some details of the $35 billion deal.  “This is a standard procedure on merger investigations which is activated if the notifying parties do not provide an important piece of information that the Commission has requested from them,” European Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso stated.  The EU competition authority will set a new deadline for its decision when it has the required information from the companies.  Antitrust regulators are worried that higher prices and less innovation may follow the proposed merger.

A View from Constantine Cannon’s London Office

By Richard Pike and Yulia Tosheva

The European Commission has reportedly launched a preliminary antitrust investigation into possible collusion by Western Union in the money remittance market.

According to sources, the European Commission is investigating whether exclusivity contracts signed between money-transfer provider Western Union and retail outlets violate European Union competition rules.

The European Commission is reportedly also looking into allegations that banks agreed to close accounts of some smaller money-transfer companies on the basis that they may be linked to drug-trafficking or terrorism.  This so-called de-risking strategy has been the subject of much discussion in the industry over the last few years, and gave rise to a claim in the English courts by one money transfer provider, Dahabshiil, which succeeded in using the Competition Act to get an interim injunction requiring Barclays to continue providing it with banking services.

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By Rosa M. Morales

Antitrust challenges to so-called “pay-for-delay” settlements—in which brand-name drug makers temporarily keep generics out of the market by making payments to would-be competitors—got a booster shot this week with a big victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

The First Circuit held on Monday that even when pay-for-delay settlements do not involve any cash payments, plaintiffs can still challenge those agreements as anticompetitive under the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in FTC v. Actavis, 133 S. Ct. 2223 (2013).  The First Circuit held in In re Loestrin 24 Fe Antitrust Litig., Nos. 14-2071, 15-1250 (1st Cir. Feb. 22, 2016), that the Actavis decision—which permits antitrust challenges to reverse-payment settlements that keep would-be generic competitors out of the market, even if the brand-name drug company holds a patent—is  not limited to agreements for cash payments.

The First Circuit’s decision revived multi-district, direct-purchaser and end-payor class actions brought against drug manufacturers Warner Chilcott, Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Lupin Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which were consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island.  The district court had dismissed claims alleging that the drug makers conspired to delay generic competition of Warner’s blockbuster oral contraceptive drug, Loestrin 24 Fe®, by striking a series of non-cash reverse-payment agreements to settle patent infringement suits, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. §1.  The First Circuit rejected the district court’s limited reading of Actavis as excluding non-cash payments, vacated that decision, and remanded the case back to district court.

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Here are some of the developments in antitrust news this past week that we found interesting and are following.

Google CEO to meet EU antitrust chief on Feb. 25 – sources. Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai will meet Europe’s antitrust chief Thursday for the first time since his appointment last August, according to sources.  European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who has accused the world’s biggest Internet search engine of favoring its shopping service over rivals’ when delivering search results, is considering acting against Google.  Possible sanctions could include ordering Google to change its business practices, as well as a fine of up to 10 percent of its global turnover.

Antitrust lawsuit against NCAA moves toward bid for monetary damages. Lawyers for the plaintiffs in an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA and 11 major conferences are asking a federal judge to grant class-action status to groups of athletes seeking monetary damages based on the difference between the value of a traditional athletic scholarship and one that also covers the full cost of attending college.  The prospective classes could cover tens of thousands of athletes and seek hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

U.S. appeals court upholds Apple e-book settlement. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has upheld Apple’s $450 million settlement of claims that it harmed consumers by conspiring with five publishers to raise e-book prices.  The appellate court rejected a challenge to the fairness, reasonableness and adequacy of Apple’s class-action antitrust settlement with consumers and 33 state attorneys general.  The alleged conspiracy caused some e-book prices to rise to $12.99 or $14.99 from Amazon’s $9.99 price, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

A View from Constantine Cannon’s London Office

By Yulia Tosheva and Richard Pike

Google won a big victory Friday in the High Court of England and Wales, which ruled that Google did not abuse its dominant position to the detriment of the now-defunct UK online mapping provider, Streetmap.

The Court’s ruling against Streetmap’s claim for damages from Google for abuse of a dominant position (or monopolization, as it would be called in the U.S.) has rightly been hailed as a thorough and careful assessment of both the factual and legal issues. The High Court judge responsible, the Honourable Mr. Justice Peter Roth, is a competition law expert who has recently taken over as the President of the specialist Competition Appeals Tribunal.

Streetmap argued that it lost market share and ultimately failed because of the introduction of Google’s “Maps OneBox” at the top of its search results page in 2007. The Maps OneBox included a Google Map and no maps from rival providers. Streetmap claimed that Google had a dominant position in online search, and that the introduction of the Maps OneBox represented an abuse of that dominance to secure an advantage in an allegedly separate market for online maps.

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