UK: Glaxo fined $54.3 million in ‘pay-for-delay’ antitrust probe

GlaxoSmithKline was fined 37.6 million pounds by the United Kingdom’s antitrust watchdog over pay-for-delay deals that held back sales of cheaper, generic versions of its anti-depressant Seroxat.

The London-based drugmaker colluded with other companies from 2001 to 2004 by agreeing to make payments “and other value transfers totaling over 50 million pounds to suppliers of generic versions of paroxetine,” the Competition and Markets Authority said in a statement Friday.

“These ‘pay-for-delay’ agreements deferred the competition that the threat of independent generic entry could offer, and potentially deprived the National Health Service of the significant price falls that generally result from generic competition,” the CMA said. “In this case, when independent generic entry eventually took place at the end of 2003, average paroxetine prices dropped by over 70 percent in two years.”

Antitrust regulators on both sides of the Atlantic for years have focused on how settlements between companies that make branded medicines and generics producers might harm consumers.

Full content: Bloomberg

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