|
 The European Commission said on Monday that it was looking into
information that Aspen has imposed hefty and unjustified price
increases of up to several hundred percent, and has withdrawn the
drugs in some EU countries or threatened to do so in others.
Aspen acquired the medicines after their patent protection had
expired. Its shares extended losses on news of the EU probe and were
down 2.3 percent at 279.05 rand by 1020 GMT (6.20 a.m. ET).
The EU competition enforcer said the probe will focus on niche
medicines containing the active pharmaceutical ingredients
chlorambucil, melphalan, mercaptopurine, tioguanine and busulfan for
treating cancer such as hematologic tumors.
"Companies should be rewarded for producing these pharmaceuticals to
ensure that they keep making them into the future. But when the
price of a drug suddenly goes up by several hundred percent, this is
something the Commission may look at," European Competition
Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
The investigation will cover all of Europe except Italy, which hit
the company with a five-million-euro fine in October last year for
price hikes up to 1,500 percent for some key drugs.
[to top of second column] |
The EU enforcer can fine companies up to 10 percent of their global
turnover for breaching the bloc's antitrust rules. It handed down
multi-million euro penalties to a number of drugmakers in recent
years for various offences.
Aspen, based in the South African city of Durban, has expanded
overseas to benefit from the expiry of patents on best-selling
drugs, fuelling a more than nine-fold increase in its share price
since early 2008.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, editing by Louise Heavens)
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
