Covid-19 could throw fi­nal hur­dle in­to Ab­b­Vie and Al­ler­gan’s mas­sive merg­er

You can add Ab­b­Vie and Al­ler­gan’s $63 bil­lion merg­er to the list of plans po­ten­tial­ly dis­rupt­ed by Covid-19.

The Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion said that it may need to of­fer ex­ten­sions on cer­tain cas­es be­cause coro­n­avirus-re­lat­ed dis­rup­tions may make it dif­fi­cult for com­pa­nies to make doc­u­ments and wit­ness­es avail­able, Bloomberg re­port­ed.

That could mean a sud­den road­block just be­fore the fin­ish line for the gi­ant drug­mak­ers, who have been slow-walk­ing their way to a merg­er since they an­nounced one last June. Most re­cent­ly, in ear­ly March, the Eu­ro­pean Union gave the all-clear and — months af­ter the FTC is­sued a rare “sec­ond re­quest” in their re­view of the buy­out — the two com­pa­nies said they had agreed to a time­line with the US agency to fin­ish by the first days of the 2nd quar­ter, i.e. ear­ly April or May.

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