Roche CEO says antitrust regulators should block Catalent sale to Novo Foundation

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The CEO of Swiss pharmaceuticals behemoth Roche (OTCQX:RHHBY) said he believes antitrust regulators should not allow Novo Nordisk Foundation’s to purchase Catalent (NYSE:CTLT).

“It’s not a problem for us, but it could be a problem for other smaller players, if there is a restriction in how many (contract manufacturers) are available,” Roche CEO Thomas Schinecker said on a media call, according to a Reuters report on Wednesday. “From an industry perspective, it would be a wrong decision by authorities.”

The Roche CEO comments come as some other industry players, including Eli Lilly (LLY), Novo Nordisk’s main competitor in the GLP-1 space, have reportedly come out against the Catalent (CTLT) deal.

Last week, several consumer groups said that the Federal Trade Commission should block the planned $16.5 billion deal , arguing that a deal would hurt competition in weigh-loss drugs.

Schinecker later clarified his comments on Roche’s results call on Wednesday.

“I was asked around manufacturing for our, specifically the CT388 because the oral molecule is a small molecule,” Schinecker said on the results call. “So we have all of the manufacturing capacity that we need. And here we have agreements with CDMOs and, or CMOs and yeah, and we will continue to build up our own manufacturing. Now, I think in general, if companies start buying up CMOs, that will limit the amount of competition that there can be, given that there are also a lot of smaller companies that may not have as much access to CMOs as we have. And that’s where my comment came from. And I stand behind that. I think it doesn’t make sense from a perspective from antitrust authorities who wants competition.”

In February, Catalent said it had agreed to be acquired by Novo Holdings for $63.50 a share. Novo Holdings will then sell three Catalent manufacturing sites to Novo Nordisk (NVO), which should help increase production of the company’s hugely popular weight-loss drug, Wegovy.

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