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UK’s CMA Told To Review Evidence Against Pfizer And Flynn

By  |  March 11, 2020

Britain’s competition regulator has been told to review its evidence against US drugmaker Pfizer and Flynn Pharma in the UK as it seeks to reinstate a record £90m fine for excessive drug pricing, reported The Financial Times. 

The drugmakers have avoided paying the fine after winning an appeal against the Competition and Markets Authority’s decision in 2018. The CMA took the case to the Court of Appeal, which on Tuesday dismissed three of its four grounds of objection to the tribunal’s decision.

In its judgment the court said the CMA should reconsider evidence that the companies had abused their dominant position to increase prices as well as the scale of any fine. But the court agreed that it did not have to set a theoretical benchmark when assessing abuse in relation to pricing drugs.

The ruling comes after the CMA fined Flynn and Pfizer £90m four years ago for abusing their dominant market position by increasing the price of an anti-seizure drug, relied upon by 48,000 epilepsy patients in the UK, by 2,285 per cent overnight in 2012.