(Updated to add comment from Teva Pharmaceuticals in the ninth and 10th paragraphs.)
BRUSSELS -(Dow Jones)- The European Commission on Tuesday said it has launched a new antitrust probe against pharmaceutical companies after having raided a number of their offices Monday.
The commission said its officials raided the premises of a "number of pharmaceutical companies" in several European Union member states, suspecting them of having operated a cartel or abusing their dominant market positions.
"The raids took place today also, and will continue tomorrow," said a spokesman for the commission's competition office, Jonathan Todd.
The commission wouldn't identify the companies in question, and several large pharmaceutical companies have said they aren't involved in the probe. Merck KGAA (MRK.XE), AstraZeneca PLC (AZN) and Novartis AG (NVS) said they hadn't been raided so far. GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK) said it wasn't aware of any antitrust raids.
The investigation comes just days before the commission is due to announce its findings from a boarder pharmaceutical-sector inquiry, which set out to determine whether the sector was suffering from competitive bottlenecks.
The commission said the knowledge acquired during the sector inquiry allowed it to "draw conclusions on where commission action based on competition law could be appropriate and effective."
At the start of the sector inquiry back in January, the commission raided companies including AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis SA (SNY), Novartis' Sandoz generics unit, Merck & Co. (MRK), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Pfizer Inc. (PFE), concerned that the companies were colluding to cut deals that temporarily sideline generic-drug manufacturers in return for payoffs.
"It would make sense if this time around they were knocking at the doors of smaller generics companies," said one person in Brussels familiar with the pharmaceutical-sector inquiry.
There is no strict time limit for cartel investigations, as their duration usually depends on the complexity of the case and the companies' cooperation.
The commission's fines have increased considerably over the past few years, with French glass maker Saint-Gobain SA receiving the largest single fine, at EUR896 million, earlier November.
Seven of the top 10 cartel fines that the E.U. has levied have come in the past three years. And in 2007, the cartel fines set a record at EUR3.3 billion.
-By Peppi Kiviniemi, Dow Jones Newswires; +32 (0)2 741 1483; peppi.kiviniemi@dowjones.com
(Thomas Gryta contributed to this report.)
Click here to go to Dow Jones NewsPlus, a web front page of today's most important business and market news, analysis and commentary: http://www.djnewsplus.com/al?rnd=VNf1o8oJFnifzxvjBbgEew%3D%3D. You can use this link on the day this article is published and the following day.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 25, 2008 16:57 ET (21:57 GMT)

Publié le 25 novembre 2008 Copyright © 2008 Dowjones