ADVERTISEMENT

Company News

Teva Hit With €463 Million EU Fine for Talking Down Rivals

Teva branding. (Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. has been fined nearly €463 million ($503 million) by the European Union’s antitrust watchdog for thwarting fair competition by unfairly disparaging a rival maker of a multiple sclerosis drug.

The European Commission said that Teva also manipulated the patent protection of its blockbuster Copaxone treatment, while spreading misleading information across the region about a competing drug manufactured by Synthon.

“Teva sought to create doubts about its rival product,” EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement Thursday. “It spread information contradicted by health authorities’ findings, seeking to sow doubt on the safety, efficacy and therapeutic equivalence of the rival product.”

The company targeted doctors and organizations involved in drug pricing and reimbursement with the objective of slowing down or blocking its competitor’s entry, the Brussels-based commission added. The watchdog accused Teva of the violations as long as 9 years in some places. 

“Teva disagrees with the commission’s legal theories which are legally untested” and “not supported by the facts,” the Tel Aviv-based company said in an emailed statement. It said it would appeal the commission’s fine.

Teva stock fell as much as 1.7% in Tel Aviv before paring back. In pre-market trading in New York, Teva’s ADRs fell as much as 2.1% on Thursday.

Abusive tactics from some of the world’s pharmaceutical giants have been in the EU’s crosshairs for years. Vestager has warned that major players in the industry had been employing novel strategies to fight off the threat of fair competition, particularly at a time in which European and American pharmaceutical markets were becoming increasingly concentrated. 

Last year, pharma firm Vifor made pledges to EU regulators to offset antitrust allegations about how it had disparaged Monofer, an iron deficiency treatment.    

Teva’s penalty is not the first time Tel Aviv-based Teva has been scolded by the EU’s competition enforcers. In 2020, Teva was fined €60.5 million for a pact with Cephalon — which it subsequently bought — to delay sales of a cheaper version of a sleep-disorder drug. The company is still appealing the penalty at the EU’s top court.

In 2014, Teva was among a raft of drug firms hit by EU penalties for other so-called pay-to-delay deals that slowed down the marketing of a hypertension treatment.

Pay-to-delay deals have in the past attracted regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic amid concerns they may thwart lower health-care costs for patients and taxpayers. The disputed settlements are a by-product of the economics of the industry, where branded medicine companies can reap billions of dollars from blockbuster drugs — and then see those sales plummet the moment an alternative appears.

--With assistance from Deirdre Hipwell, Lisa Pham and Subrat Patnaik.

(Updates with Teva response in fifth paragraph)

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.