Danaher's Acquisition of GE’s Biopharmaceutical Unit Approved
The Korea Fair Trade Commission has conditionally approved the acquisition of GE’s biopharmaceutical business unit by U.S. medical equipment manufacturer Danaher Corp.
The commission announced on Feb. 4 that it looked into the case and approved the acquisition on condition of imposing a corrective measure in order to prevent market monopoly.
The two companies reported their business combination in May last year. Then, the commission conducted a review and reached a conclusion that eight products are likely to limit market competition. According to the corrective measure, one of the two companies must dispose of every asset related to the eight products within six months from the date of completion of the combination. It is the commission’s first corrective measure related to a business combination in the bio sector.
The eight products consist of a microcarrier, a disposable LPLC skid, an ordinary LPLC column, an affinity resin, an ion-exchange resin, a mixed-mode resin, a continuous chromatography skid, and a label-free detection method. The microcarrier is a cell incubator surface for cell adhesion. The skids, column and resins are required for chromatography for cell mass separation and analysis.