US: DAs get personal on pharma, name Mylan, Emcure execs

Mylan president Rajiv Malik has been named in an expanded federal lawsuit filed by attorneys general in nearly every state, that accuses Mylan and more than a dozen other drugmakers of conspiring to fix prices for generic drugs.

The amended complaint, which state officials are asking federal court for permission to file, also names Satish Mehta, CEO of the India-based drugmaker Emcure Pharmaceuticals, the parent company of Heritage Pharmaceuticals in New Jersey.

Mr. Malik and Mr. Mehta would be the first senior executives sued in the case.

“These conspiracies were part of a much broader, overarching industry code of conduct that enabled the [drugmakers] to divvy up the market for specific generic drugs in accordance with an established, agreed-upon understanding for assigning each competitor their share of the market,” said Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen, who is leading the antitrust investigation, in a statement.

The original lawsuit, filed in December 2016 in Connecticut and then moved to Philadelphia in August, named Mylan, Heritage Pharmaceuticals and four other drugmakers, accusing them of conspiring to fix prices for two drugs. The new complaint expands the number of generic drug companies to 18 and the number of drugs at issue to 15.

Full Content: Bloomberg

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