The Antitrust Week In Review

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

EU Regulators Set to Warn Halliburton on Baker Hughes Deal: Sources.  European Union antitrust regulators are planning to warn U.S. oil industry services group Halliburton Co that its plan to buy Baker Hughes will hurt competition, according to sources.  The move would add to Halliburton’s woes after the U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit this month to stop the deal because the combined company would only compete with Schlumberger NV in 20 business lines in the global well drilling and oil industry construction services industry.  Such a warning typically means the EU watchdog is poised to block a merger unless companies provide concessions to address its concerns.

Microsoft and Google Agree to Drop Mutual Complaints.  Microsoft and Google have agreed to withdraw complaints against each other with regulators around the world, as the two American tech giants continued recent efforts to settle the once-bitter conflicts between them.  The two companies also said they would try to resolve future squabbles before complaining to regulators, as they have in the past.

Trading Start-Up Files Antitrust Lawsuit in New York.  Derivatives trading start-up TeraExchange has filed an antitrust lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York alleging that some of the biggest banks in the world conspired to block customers from using its service.  The suit charges that 12 banks conspired to keep investors from trading interest rates swaps on its platform, which was founded in 2010.  Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, RBS and UBS were named in the suit.

Glaxo, Other Drug Makers Appeal UK Fines for Pay-to-Delay Deals.  GlaxoSmithKline is appealing a $54.5 million fine that was recently levied by UK regulators for illegally conspiring with several generic rivals to delay marketing of a lower-cost version of its Paxil antidepressant.  The generic manufacturers were also fined a total of about $7 million and are appealing those decisions, as well.  The appeals come two months after the UK Competitions and Market Authority found that between 2001 and 2004, Glaxo made payments totaling about $72 million to several generic companies as part of a settlement to end patent litigation that was filed by Glaxo against the generic drug makers.  In its appeal, Glaxo argued that the UK regulators failed to prove the deals restricted competition and that its own tactics did not constitute abuse of a dominant position in the market for antidepressants.