As Spark share­hold­ers balk, FTC holdup helps de­lay Roche's $4.3B buy­out

Roche is hav­ing a bit of a hic­cup in clos­ing its $4.3 bil­lion buy­out of Spark af­ter a heat­ed bid­ding war, caus­ing the phar­ma gi­ant to push the dead­line for a deal that it in­sists is go­ing to be com­plet­ed in two months.

Two hur­dles cur­rent­ly stand in the way: Roche hasn’t se­cured the ma­jor­i­ty sup­port it needs from Spark’s share­hold­ers, and the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion has yet to give its bless­ing for the deal. The FTC, which rou­tine­ly re­views pro­posed merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions to en­sure they don’t re­duce com­pe­ti­tion, was tak­ing longer than ex­pect­ed, ac­cord­ing to Roche.

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