Stampa

A480 - Antitrust’s investigation on the price increase for Aspen’s anticancer drugs


PRESS RELEASE


PRESS RELEASE


Antitrust’s investigation on the price increase for Aspen’s anticancer drugs

The Antitrust Authority has decided to embark upon an investigation of the companies Aspen Pharma Trading Limited and Aspen Italia S.r.l., belonging to the South African group Aspen, so as to verify the thesis of a possible “abuse of dominant position” in the market of band A anticancer drugs, the costs of which are thus borne by the national Health Care Service. One is dealing in particular with four products: Alkeran, Leukeran, Purinethol and Tioguanina. Aspen, according to the thesis put forward in the resolution to embark on the investigation, “allegedly forced Aifa (the Italian drug agency) to accept extremely high price increases, thereby occasioning an increased expense for the national Health Care Service”. Since date of notification of the said resolution, the companies shall have 60 days within which they might request a hearing and exercise the right to be heard by the Authority headed by Giovanni Pitruzzella. The investigation will be finalized within 31 December 2015.

The investigation began after a consistent price increase – from 250% up to 1.500% - applied to these drugs in the course of 2014. The news had been circulated even by the “Altroconsumo” association within the context of a newspaper investigation into the so-called “disappearance of the drugs”. Since April 2013, based on the reconstruction by the Antitrust which relied on the Financial Police’s investigations, Aspen has manifested to Aifa “the need to urgently align the selling price in Italy to the considerably higher one in force in the main European Union countries”. In that manner, it succeeded in “altering the structure of competition within the significant markets so as to secure extra profits”. A constituent element of the disputed abuse allegedly consisted in Aspen’s threat to Aifa to withdraw the authorization to the marketing of the drugs in the event that no agreement was reached on the new prices.

Since one is dealing with therapeutic indications of an “essential” character, which the producing company itself acknowledges as being “unique” in treating certain specific pathologies, Aspen’s strategy was allegedly aimed – apart from the achievement of extra profits in the national market – even “at limiting the phenomenon of parallel trade on the part of the local distributors”. The investigation by the Competition and Market Guarantor Authority (Agcm) tends to ascertain whether the right to request a price review or a review of the refundability class of its own drugs has “been exercised in an exploitative manner inconsistent with the purpose which the governing set of rules acknowledges to be legitimate”, by means of possible “undue pressures” and an abuse of its dominant position.


Rome, 27 November 2014