Up­dat­ed: EU swats down Il­lu­mi­na's $8B Grail ac­qui­si­tion days af­ter FTC lost an­titrust case

Eu­ro­pean reg­u­la­tors blocked Il­lu­mi­na’s $8 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of Grail on Tues­day, deal­ing a whiplash blow to the biotech just days af­ter it pre­vailed over an FTC chal­lenge.

The EC put out a state­ment on the move, say­ing the deal would have “sti­fled in­no­va­tion, and re­duced choice” in the grow­ing blood-based can­cer screen­ing test mar­ket. Specif­i­cal­ly, the bloc not­ed that be­cause oth­er com­pa­nies re­ly on Il­lu­mi­na’s NGS sys­tems tech­nol­o­gy for their own prod­ucts, a merg­er would have grant­ed Il­lu­mi­na an un­fair ad­van­tage over its ri­vals.

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