Abbott (NYSE:ABT) made moves yesterday on a pair of pending, multi-billion-dollar acquisitions, its $25 billion merger with St. Jude Medical (NYSE:STJ) and a $6 billion union with Alere (NYSE:ALR).
The European Commission said Abbott, which along with St. Jude agreed to deal some of its vascular assets to Japan’s Terumo Corp. (TYO:4543) last month, agreed to make unspecified concessions to win over anti-trust regulators there. That pushes the deadline back for the commission’s ruling on the deal, from the prior cutoff of Nov. 9 to Nov. 21. The merger, announced in April, is slated to close by the end of this year.
Abbott also reportedly leveled a breach-of-contract lawsuit against Alere, seeking more information on legal investigations of the Waltham, Mass.-based diagnostics giant’s sales practices in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The $5.8 billion deal, announced in February, soon ran into trouble. A March 11 subpoena from the U.S. Justice Dept. sought documents on Alere’s dealings with 3rd-party distributors and foreign healthcare officials and the company was late in filing its full-year results for 2015.
Alere in April rejected a $50 million offer from Abbott to spike the merger and a few months later sued Abbott, looking to force its would-be acquirer to obtain all antitrust approvals required to complete the acquisition. In early September, Delaware Chancery Court Judge Sam Glasscock put the lawsuit on the fast track and urged the companies to try and talk things out; an attempt at mediation failed later that month.
Abbott’s suit in the Delaware state court seeks to compel Alere to divulge more information about the legal investigations, according to The Deal.
“Abbott has reluctantly sought court intervention only after months of repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempting to get Alere to honor the agreement and provide information about business practices that are the focus of criminal and civil investigations that came to light after the merger agreement around federal anti-corruption, anti-kickback and U.S. healthcare laws,” spokesman Scott Stoffel told the website. “Abbott would be responsible for the company upon close and has the right to understand these issues so that it can prepare to address them immediately.”
Material from Reuters was used in this report.
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