Tag: Competition

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. and Precision Dermatology, Inc. agreed to sell or relinquish rights to Precision’s branded single-agent topical tretinoins and generic Retin-A, common acne treatments, to settle FTC charges that Valeant’s proposed $475 million acquisition of Precision would likely be anticompetitive. According to the FTC complaint, Valeant’s proposed acquisition of Precision would likely reduce competition in the market for branded and generic single-agent topical tretinoins, and in a separate market for generic Retin-A. The proposed consent order requires Valeant to sell Precision’s assets related to Tretin-X, its branded single-agent topical tretinoin, to Actavis, Inc., and Precision’s assets related to generic Retin-A to Matawan Pharmaceuticals LLC, a subsidiary of Rouses Point Pharmaceuticals.

According to the FTC’s complaint, Berkshire Hathaway changed convertible notes it owned in USG into 21.4 million voting securities on December 9, 2013. As a result of the conversion, the value of its USG holdings exceeded $283.6 million, the premerger reporting threshold under the HSR Act at the time. The company subsequently made a corrective filing, and acknowledged that the transaction should have been reported under the HSR Act. The final judgment settling the complaint requires Berkshire Hathaway to pay a civil penalty of $896,000, based on the time it was in violation of the HSR Act, from December 9, 2013 when it acquired the shares via the conversion through February 3, 2014, the end of the waiting period for the corrective filing.

Fidelity National Financial, Inc. agreed to settle charges that its proposed $2.9 billion acquisition of Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS) would likely substantially lessen competition by combining the firms’ title plant assets in several local markets in Oregon. To preserve competition, the proposed settlement requires Fidelity to sell a copy of LPS’s title plants in six Oregon counties and an ownership interest equivalent to LPS’s share of a jointly owned title plant in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area.

The FTC alleged that starting in 2004 Marker Völkl and Tecnica agreed not to compete with each other to secure endorsements by professional skiers, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. Specifically, the FTC charges that Marker Völkl agreed not to solicit, recruit, or contact any skier who previously endorsed Tecnica skis, and Tecnica agreed to a similar arrangement with respect to Marker Völkl’s endorsers. In addition, the complaint states that in 2007, the companies expanded the scope of their non-compete agreement to cover all of their employees. The orders settling the FTC’s charges bar each firm from engaging in similar anticompetitive conduct in the future.

The FTC alleges that starting in 2004 Marker Völkl and Tecnica agreed not to compete with each other to secure endorsements by professional skiers, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. Specifically, the FTC charges that Marker Völkl agreed not to solicit, recruit, or contact any skier who previously endorsed Tecnica skis, and Tecnica agreed to a similar arrangement with respect to Marker Völkl’s endorsers. In addition, the complaint states that in 2007, the companies expanded the scope of their non-compete agreement to cover all of their employees. The proposed orders settling the FTC’s charges bar each firm from engaging in similar anticompetitive conduct in the future.