The Bundeskartellamt has cleared the planned acquisition by the Danish company Novo Nordisk A/S of all shares in Cardior Pharmaceuticals GmbH based in Hannover. Cardior is a biotech company focusing on heart diseases, in the case at hand cardiac insufficiency or heart failure. The company has not yet offered any approved substances. Cardior’s main development product is an active substance against cardiac insufficiency caused by heart attacks. However, this pipeline product has yet to undergo further clinical studies within the next few years.

The acquirer Novo Nordisk is an international pharmaceuticals company mainly focusing on the development of therapies for the treatment of diabetes and obesity. Among the company’s currently best-known finished medicinal products are the Wegovy and Ozempic “weight loss injections”. They include the active substance semaglutide, which is primarily used to treat type 2 diabetes as well as obesity.

Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: “With the acquisition of the innovative biotech company Cardior, Novo Nordisk intends to expand its expertise in the area of cardiovascular diseases, complementing its own research efforts. All of the company’s own development products for the treatment of cardiac insufficiency are targeted at other groups of patients than those addressed by Cardior’s active substance. In addition, the substance developed by Cardior works in a completely different way. Having examined the project, we have no competition concerns about the merger. A large number of potential alternative active substances are in development, and we also expect to see competition from generics or biosimilars. Once again this case demonstrates the relevance of the provision on the transaction value threshold, which was incorporated into the German Competition Act in 2017. Without this provision we would not have been able to examine this case, despite its great economic significance.”

The transaction value threshold allows the Bundeskartellamt to examine under competition law mergers where companies or assets are acquired at a purchase price of more than 400 million euros, although they generate little or no turnover at the time of the transaction. The acquisition of Cardior is set to cost up to 1.025 billion euros.