
A member of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says the agency should review its 2012 decision to approve the acquisition of a small ventilator company by medical-device maker Covidien, a deal that may have stymied a government effort to produce the machines.
FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democrat at the Republican-controlled commission, said Monday she wants to know more about what the companies disclosed to the agency when the FTC granted antitrust approval of the merger without an in-depth investigation.
The New York Times reported that US health officials, worried about a shortage of ventilators over a decade ago, contracted with a small California device maker, Newport Medical Instruments Inc., to produce inexpensive, easy-to-use machines to add to the national stockpile. Newport planned to sell the devices for about a third of the price that other companies were charging. Covidien, which also made ventilators, agreed to buy Newport for US$108 million, and then sought to get out of the contract, according to the Times. The government agreed to cancel the agreement.
The failure of the project to produce ventilators now raises questions about whether Covidien bought Newport in order to block competition from a rival product and protect its own ventilator business and whether the transaction received the appropriate scrutiny from federal antitrust officials.
Antitrust enforcers are paying increasing attention to whether companies are buying emerging rivals as a way to eliminate emerging threats to their businesses, sometimes by shutting them down. FTC Chairman Joe Simons said in February the agency would investigate small acquisitions by the biggest US technology companies to determine if the deals were anticompetitive.
Full Content: Bloomberg
Want more news? Subscribe to CPI’s free daily newsletter for more headlines and updates on antitrust developments around the world.
Featured News
Dollar Tree to Sell Family Dollar for $1 Billion, Ending Struggling Merger
Mar 26, 2025 by
CPI
Meta Platforms Defends Use of Authors’ Works in AI Training in US Court
Mar 26, 2025 by
CPI
EU Pressed Meta to Address Antitrust Concerns Over Facebook Marketplace
Mar 26, 2025 by
CPI
UBS, Nomura, and UniCredit Fail to Overturn EU Antitrust Fines in Bond Trading Cartel Case
Mar 26, 2025 by
CPI
Coca-Cola Among Firms Targeted in EU Antitrust Raids
Mar 26, 2025 by
CPI
Antitrust Mix by CPI
Antitrust Chronicle® – Mobile Ecosystems
Mar 24, 2025 by
CPI
Mobile Ecosystems: An Intellectual Entelechy but A Necessary Model
Mar 24, 2025 by
Alba Ribera Martinez
Creating Contestability and Fairness in Mobile Ecosystems: The Contribution of the DMA
Mar 24, 2025 by
Damien Geradin & Daniel Mandrescu
Digital Ecosystems and the Not (Yet) As Efficient Competitor Principle
Mar 24, 2025 by
Thomas Hoppner & Philipp Westerhoff
Assessing the Competition Law Scrutiny of Smart Wearables and Mobile AR/VR Devices
Mar 24, 2025 by
Kayvan Hazemi-Jebelli