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

Court Reinstates Lawsuits Alleging Collusion by Big Banks.  Lawsuits against 16 of the world’s largest banks alleging they colluded to manipulate the primary benchmark for global short-term interest rates were reinstated by a federal appeals court that decided that a district court judge had rejected the litigation too quickly.  Saying it wasn’t a close call, the Second Circuit  U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan restored lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages brought by investors in financial instruments mostly issued by the banks.  The appeals court said the claims of the plaintiffs had to be taken as true at this stage of the litigation and they had “plausibly alleged both antitrust violation and antitrust injury.”

Exclusive: U.S. Queries AB InBev on Distribution Incentives Amid Merger Probe.  U.S. antitrust officials are investigating Anheuser-Busch InBev over its new incentives that encourage independent distributors to sell more of its own beer brands at the expense of competing craft brews, according to sources.  Budweiser owner AB InBev has 45.8 percent of the U.S. beer market but has seen sales dwindle at least partially because of rising craft beer sales.  The U.S. Department of Justice last year probed AB InBev’s plan to buy distributors in response to craft brewers’ complaints that it aimed to curb competition.

Anthem CEO Says Cigna Deal Moving Forward with Antitrust Review.  Anthem Inc Chief Executive Officer Joseph Swedish claims that the antitrust process with Cigna Corp is moving forward as expected – including on the national level – and that tensions with the smaller insurer about the review are in the past.  Swedish, speaking at the UBS Global Healthcare Conference, said that he expects the U.S. Department of Justice to make a determination on the deal in the “not too distant future.”  Investors have questioned whether the $54 billion deal would be able to get past antitrust regulators.

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

Bayer Offers to Buy Monsanto in Global Agrochemicals Shakeout.  German drugs and chemicals group Bayer has made an unsolicited takeover proposal to U.S. seeds company Monsanto, seeking to create the world’s biggest agricultural supplier and take advantage of converging pesticides and seeds markets.  Monsanto disclosed the approach on Wednesday before Bayer confirmed its move, though neither released proposed terms.  The $42 billion market capitalization of Monsanto means that the deal would be likely to eclipse ChemChina’s planned acquisition of Swiss agrichemicals company Syngenta – a target Monsanto itself pursued last year – and could face U.S. antitrust hurdles.

Ill-Fated Strategy in Staples-Office Depot Deal.  A federal judge’s order ending the planned merger of Staples and Office Depot took many in the antitrust community by surprise, but only slightly more so than the decision of the lead defense lawyer to rest without presenting evidence.  That unsuccessful strategy came as the vigor in federal merger enforcement had apparently been revived, and even exaggerated, even though this deal was in so many other ways big and audacious.  The ruling ending the merger was released on Tuesday, and it strongly endorses competition and antitrust.

2nd Circuit Rejects Antitrust Case Over Acorda Citizen Petition.  A federal appeals court tossed an antitrust lawsuit by generic drug maker Apotex Inc accusing Acorda Therapeutics of filing a citizen petition with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in order to suppress competition for its muscle relaxant drug Zanaflex.   A unanimous panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the fact that the FDA had granted Apotex’s application to make a generic version of Zanaflex capsules the same day it denied Acorda’s citizen petition opposing the application did not create an inference that Acorda’s petition had delayed approval.

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

Google Faces Record 3 Billion Euro EU Antitrust Fine: Telegraph.  Google faces a record antitrust fine of about 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) from the European Commission in the coming weeks, according to the British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph.  The European Union has accused Google of promoting its shopping service in Internet searches at the expense of rival services in a case that has dragged on since late 2010.  The Telegraph cited sources close to the situation as saying officials planned to announce the fine as early as next month.

Office Depot and Staples Call Off Merger After Judge Blocks It.  A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a $6.3 billion proposed merger of Staples and Office Depot, dashing another huge deal and handing the Obama administration one more antitrust victory.  The decision is a setback for the beleaguered retailers, which have each endured years of slumping sales and increased competition from Amazon and other rivals.  The Federal Trade Commission had sued the two companies late last year, arguing that combining them would effectively create just one dominant retailer focused on pens, paper clips and Post-it notes.  Both companies said after the ruling that they planned to end their merger plans.

FTC Taking Second Look at Google Search: Politico.  Federal Trade Commission officials are asking questions again about whether Alphabet Inc’s Google has abused its dominance in the Internet search market, Politico reported, citing sources familiar with the discussions.  The FTC’s senior antitrust officials have discussed the matter in recent months with representatives of a major U.S. company, which objects to Google’s practices, Politico reported.

E.U. Regulators Block Merger of British Mobile Carriers on Competition Grounds.  European antitrust officials on Wednesday rebuffed renewed efforts to consolidate the region’s telecommunications sector, blocking a proposed $14.5 billion deal between two major British carriers.  Under the proposed deal, Hutchison Whampoa, one of the Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing’s flagship companies, which owns the British operator Three, had sought to acquire O2, a rival in Britain owned by the Spanish telecom giant Telefónica.  But Europe’s competition chief, Margrethe Vestager, said the deal would limit consumer choice and could raise prices in Britain.

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

Cigna Says Anthem Deal Could Close in 2017; Anthem Sticks to 2016.  Health insurer Cigna Corp, which announced plans to be bought by larger Anthem Inc 10 months ago, on Friday said the deal may close in 2017 rather than 2016 due to the complexity of the regulatory process, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  The U.S. Department of Justice is currently reviewing the Cigna-Anthem deal, which raises serious antitrust issues given that it would create the nation’s largest health insurer.

Halliburton and Baker Hughes Call Off $35 Billion Merger.  For a year and a half, Halliburton and Baker Hughes, two big oil field services companies, had been focused on their $35 billion merger.  That distraction, even as commodity prices deteriorated and their peers cut costs to survive, is finally over.  The two companies announced that they would terminate the merger after an excruciatingly long regulatory review process that culminated in a lawsuit last month by the Justice Department to block the deal on antitrust grounds.

Bankers Say U.S. Antitrust Concerns Weigh on Deal Activity.  Antitrust concerns are preventing corporations from pursuing mergers more than other broad regulatory or economic issues, several senior investment bankers said during a panel on Tuesday at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference.  “It’s that increasingly high bar that we’re seeing from an anti-trust perspective,” said Paul Stefanick, Deutsche Bank AG’s head of corporate and investment banking in the Americas.  Stefanick said doubts about whether deals can pass muster with antitrust regulators are a bigger barrier to deals than uncertainties like the outcome of November’s U.S. election.

FCC Confirms Approval of Charter, Time Warner Cable Merger.  The U.S. Federal Communications Commission confirmed on Friday that it had voted to approve Charter Communications Inc’s acquisitions of Time Warner Cable Inc and Bright House Networks.  The deals, which would create the second-largest U.S. broadband provider and third-largest video provider, now need approval from regulators in California.

By Ankur Kapoor

Citing the well-known maxim that the antitrust laws are concerned with “the protection of competition, not competitors,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Wednesday affirmed summary judgment for Defendant Sanofi Aventis on Plaintiff Eisai, Inc.’s claim that Sanofi foreclosed competition in the market for anticoagulant drugs administered in hospitals.

Eisai alleged that Sanofi dominated that market with its Lovenox® product.  In addition to being FDA-approved for the treatment and prevention of deep-vein thrombosis (DVT), a potentially life-threatening condition in which a blood clot (thrombus) could break loose and into the bloodstream, Lovenox® is FDA-approved for six other indications, including the treatment of severe forms of heart attack.  Eisai’s Fragmin® competes with Lovenox® for treatment of DVT and is approved for four other indications, but not for treatment of severe forms of heart attack.  According to the court, there are two other injectable anticoagulants in the relevant product market: LEO Pharma’s Innohep® and GlaxoSmithKline’s Arixtra®.

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