WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senator Elizabeth Warren, an antitrust hawk, expressed disappointment with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s decision to allow pharmaceutical firm Amgen to move forward with its acquisition of Horizon Therapeutics.
Warren, a Democrat, has staunchly supported the FTC and Justice Department’s tougher stance on mergers under President Joe Biden. In a rare break with the Biden administration’s antitrust enforcers, she urged them to get even tougher.
“I remain concerned regarding the effects of this deal on the price and availability of medicine,” she wrote in a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan and two commissioners. The letter was dated Wednesday.
The FTC had filed a lawsuit in May to stop the $28 billion deal, a rare attempt to block a pharmaceutical merger, but settled with the companies months later. The deal closed in October.
The settlement involved requirements that Amgen refrain from bundling any of its products with two Horizon medicines: Tepezza, which treats thyroid eye disease, or a medicine for chronic gout called Krystexxa.
Warren said that she was concerned that these and other behavioral remedies were “difficult to administer and enforce and cease to be binding once the term of the agreement ends, though anticompetitive effects remain.” Some elements of the FTC settlement with Amgen expire in nine years and others in 15 years.
She also urged the FTC and Justice Department to finalize an update of merger guidelines. “The FTC should urgently finalize the proposed guidelines and rely on them in challenging transactions that would further entrench a dominant company like Amgen,” she wrote.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by David Gregorio)
