EU Ends Probe Into Servier Over Misleading Medicines Inquiry
January 27, 2012, 6:52 AM ESTBy Aoife White
Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- European Union regulators dropped an antitrust probe into Les Laboratoires Servier for hampering an investigation into potential antitrust violations by companies seeking to keep cheaper generic medicine out of the EU market.
Servier, France’s second-largest drugmaker, was accused in 2010 of providing “misleading and incorrect” information during a probe into the pharmaceutical industry over possible delays to generic versions of patented medicines.
The European Commission closed the case because Servier’s arguments “would require significant further investigation” and would “instead focus” on competition concerns raised by “a number of pending cases, including one involving Servier,” according to an e-mailed statement today.
The Brussels-based antitrust agency started a probe of the pharmaceutical industry in January 2008. In a report in 2009, it found that companies use a variety of techniques to delay the introduction of generics “for as long as possible.”
This decision “confirms Servier’s position and contradicts the allegations of dissimulation that were made against the group at the time,” said Lucy Vincent, a spokeswoman for the Neuilly-sur-Seine, France-based company in a telephone interview today.
--With assistance from Albertina Torsoli in Paris. Editors: Peter Chapman, Anthony Aarons
To contact the reporter on this story: Aoife White in Brussels at awhite62@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net.
