Overview

On 13 August, China's merger control agency - the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) - published its verdict on the Novartis/Alcon transaction on its website. MOFCOM allowed the proposed acquisition of Alcon by Novartis to go ahead, subject to conditions.

The Novartis/Alcon decision was released almost ten months after the last decision where MOFCOM had imposed conditions to approve a merger. Given that MOFCOM only has a legal obligation to make public conditional approval decisions or prohibitions, implicitly this means that all other notified transactions during this period must have been cleared unconditionally.

Novartis notified the proposed transaction to MOFCOM in April 2010. Headquartered in Switzerland, Novartis is one of the world's top life sciences companies, with a broad business portfolio. Alcon is a smaller player in the life sciences field, with a high degree of specialization in eye care products.

After identifying competition concerns in the first phase of the procedure, MOFCOM decided to open an in-depth investigation. MOFCOM found competition issues to exist in two relevant product markets: the markets for opthalmological anti-inflammatory/anti-infective products and for contact-lens care products, respectively.

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