Trump’s FTC hasn’t been friendly to pharma

Bristol-Myers Squibb’s plans to close that $74 billion Celgene merger are getting delayed thanks to the Federal Trade Commission.

The company said yesterday that it needs to sell off a top-selling Celgene psoriasis drug to appease the federal regulator, which was apparently concerned that an investigational Bristol treatment could create anticompetitive issues. Bristol’s share price fell more than 6%.

The FTC’s opinion came as a shock to analysts, who pointed out that the two drugs in question have different mechanisms of action and seemed capable of legally coexisting at a combined company. But it’s also part of a trend of strict federal views on drug industry mergers. Roche, which counts chronic hemophilia treatments among its product portfolio, has spent months going back and forth with the FTC over a planned acquisition of Spark Therapeutics, a company developing gene therapies for the same disease.

Perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise. President Trump’s slate of FTC leaders took office with a particular focus on pharma, STAT reported last year, planning what one antitrust lawyer called a “very aggressive review of both mergers involving pharmaceutical companies and drug price changes.”