Biopharmaceutical business development professionals looked on uneasily this summer as the drama of the US Federal Trade Commission’s review of the proposed Amgen, Inc./Horizon Therapeutics plc merger led to Amgen pledging to not bundle Horizon products with its own, the FTC rejecting Amgen’s proposal and filing a lawsuit to block the merger, and then the parties agreeing to a settlement on 1 September in which Amgen signed a written commitment restricting bundling of Horizon’s top sellers – Tepezza (teprotumumab) and Krystexxa (pegloticase) – with its own products.
With the even-larger Pfizer Inc./Seagen Inc. merger still pending, the industry is wondering if the FTC/Amgen disagreement means a tougher environment going forward for biopharma M&A. The FTC and the US Department of Justice issued revised draft merger guidelines in July that led the Biotechnology Industry Organization to claim that some of the provisions would be “catastrophic” for the industry