UK an­titrust watch­dog clears Roche/Spark deal — but what is the FTC think­ing?

Roche has gained the bless­ing from the UK an­titrust watch­dog to pro­ceed with its $4.3 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of Spark, just in time for the lat­est dead­line the phar­ma gi­ant has set for Spark’s in­vestors to ten­der their shares fol­low­ing 10 de­lays.

The Com­pe­ti­tion and Mar­kets Au­thor­i­ty con­firmed spec­u­la­tion and ru­mors — pret­ty much as­sumed true at this point — that they had been look­ing in­to the com­pet­i­tive land­scape for he­mo­phil­ia A treat­ments. Af­ter con­clud­ing that there will still be an ad­e­quate choice of al­ter­na­tives even af­ter the mak­ers of Hem­li­bra and a po­ten­tial gene ther­a­py are blend­ed in­to one, reg­u­la­tors gave the deal an un­con­di­tion­al clear­ance.

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