Jeff Marrazzo, Spark CEO (Credit: Endpoints News)

FTC to Roche: OK, go ahead and com­plete your $4.3B Spark buy­out — we're con­vinced now this is­n't an­ti­com­pet­i­tive

Af­ter putting Roche through mul­ti­ple de­lays dur­ing a 10-month re­view, the FTC has de­ter­mined that Roche isn’t spend­ing $4.3 bil­lion to buy Spark so it can de­stroy a po­ten­tial com­peti­tor, or use it to re­place one of their new block­busters. And the phar­ma gi­ant fol­lowed up soon af­ter to say that it had 60.4% of Spark’s stock and will for­mal­ly wrap the buy­out to­day.

The FTC an­nounced Mon­day evening that the com­mis­sion­ers vot­ed 5 to 0 to close the in­ves­ti­ga­tion af­ter de­ter­min­ing the ev­i­dence “did not in­di­cate that Roche would have the in­cen­tive to de­lay or ter­mi­nate Spark’s de­vel­op­men­tal ef­fort for its he­mo­phil­ia A gene ther­a­py, or that the ac­qui­si­tion would af­fect Roche’s in­cen­tives re­gard­ing [its he­mo­phil­ia treat­ment drug] Hem­li­bra.”

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Venture & Research Associate

Alexandria Real Estate Equities

San Francisco, CA, USA