With CEO Dick Clark clearly indicating an intention to be aggressively acquisitive, doing perhaps 100 deals a year beginning in 2010, it seems appropriate to remind Whitehouse Station that this likely won't be "your daddy's" DoJ/FTC Hart-Scott-Rodino review-process any longer. We saw it in the longer review of Schering-Plough-Merck, and in Pfizer-Wyeth. But don't take my word for it -- just watch, and listen, tonight -- to a true expert.
In the two clips below, you'll hear him explain why antitrust reviews may not turn out the way they did under the prior Administration -- from the point of view of a former Bush administration antitrust official -- Jeffrey Schmidt, now with the international law firm, Linklaters:
Next, and more specifically, what he thought was unusual about the FTC's Pfizer-Wyeth HSR processes:
Suddenly, instead of being the number eight pharma player, globally, the New Merck is now the second largest pharma concern in the world. Deals that might have been easy, from a HSR perspective before for old Merck, may suddenly be much harder to clear through the FTC, because of what this will do to the likely HHI score for Merck's deals. It is indeed a "brave new world", here Mr. Clark.
[Video-streams provided courtesy of The Daily Deal.]
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