BRIEF—FTC, DoJ issue summary on joint pharmaceutical merger analysis workshop

The US Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice, Antitrust Division released a summary of a two-day workshop that explored new approaches to enforcement of the antitrust laws in the pharmaceutical industry.

The workshop, which took place June 14-June 15, 2022, brought together FTC and DoJ staff, offices of state attorneys general, international enforcement partners, academics, and other experts.

It served as a culmination of the Multilateral Pharmaceutical Merger Task Force, an effort to rethink the approaches to pharmaceutical merger review formed by then-Acting Chairwoman Rebecca Kelly Slaughter.

The Task Force, which launched in March 2021, includes staff from the FTC, DoJ, offices of multiple state Attorneys General, Competition Bureau Canada, the European Commission Directorate-General for Competition, and the UK Competition and Markets Authority.

The workshop summary describes each speaker’s remarks and provides an overview of panel discussions on market concentration in the pharmaceutical sector, merger remedies, innovation aspects of pharmaceutical mergers, and the intersection between conduct by pharmaceutical companies and merger analysis.