Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Novartis and Roche fined over 180 mn euros by anti-trust

Italy's Antitrust authority said Wednesday that it had fined Swiss pharmaceutical companies Novartis and Roche a total of over 180 million euros for alleged collusion to manipulate the market in Italy.

"The two companies made an illegal agreement to hamper the spread of the use of a very cheap pharmaceutical, (Roche's) Avastin, in the treatment of the most widespread eye pathology among the elderly and other serious eye diseases, to favour a much more expensive product, (Novartis's) Lucentis, artificially differentiating the two products," read an Antitrust statement. It added that this had cost the Italian national health service over 45 million euros in 2012 alone and that the additional costs in the future could potentially reach 600 million euros a year.

http://www.ansa.it/web/notizie/rubriche/english/2014/03/05/Novartis-Roche-fined-180-mn-euros-anti-trust_10182795.html?

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