Excessive pricing: the Italian version

19.10.2016

Pricing issues in the pharmaceutical industry have continued to keep competition authorities busy, this time with the Italian Market Competition Authority (AGCM) fining the multinational South African pharmaceutical company Aspen near €5.2 million on 14 October 2016, following its finding that Aspen abused its dominance to artificially inflate the price of four of its cancer drugs.

In its press release/statement, the AGCM stated that Aspen, which had acquired the rights to the four essential drugs (Leukeran (chlorambucil), Alkeran (melphalan), Purinethol (mercaptopurine) and Tioguanine (tioguanine)) from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), had threatened to interrupt their supply to the Italian market in order to compel the Italian Medicines Agency to accept price increases for the drugs of between 300%-1,500% of the initial price. The drugs were described by the AGCM as “irreplaceable” and central to the treatment of blood cancers especially for children and elderly patients. In the relevant period Aspen was the only supplier of these drugs in the Italian market, which led to the finding that Aspen held a dominant position in the relevant national market and had unfairly increased the prices. The AGCM noted in particular that there was no direct substitute for the drugs, the patents had been expired for years and no economic justification for the price increases could be established.

The antitrust authority applied a two-step test to determine whether the increase in pricing amounted to unfair pricing in contravention of Article 102. The AGCM first established that there was an excessive discrepancy between the manufacturing costs and the final prices of the products and secondly considered that the pricing was excessive and unfair, by reference to factors such as the change in prices and any economic basis for this change, any potential benefits for patients, and conversely any harm to the Italian National Health Service.

There is no easy method for competition authorities (or indeed companies) to determine what constitutes excessive pricing, due to the number of variables involved. A justified price increase might be due to increased manufacturing costs or could be the reflection of a profitable market or a high-risk marketing strategy, among other factors. Ultimately, the determination of when a price is excessive remains challenging, and – where pharmaceuticals are involved – may well vary from country to country. As yet, the impact of excessive pricing on reference prices has not been examined.

Italy is not the only country to look at excessive pricing of off-patent drugs, however. Another example from the UK (on which we have reported here and here) is the ongoing CMA investigation into the pricing of the anti-epilepsy drug Epanutin by Pfizer and Flynn Pharma (the latter having acquired the marketing rights of Epanutin by Pfizer in late 2012). The CMA has recently updated its case file to push back the expected date of the conclusion of the investigation, to November 2016. The focus of the investigation is understood to be whether the pricing for phenytoin sodium capsules is excessive and unfair and thus constitutes an Article 102 and Chapter II abuse.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the antitrust authorities have considered similar issues with the 50-fold increase in the price of Turing Pharmaceuticals’ Daraprim and the more recent Mylan EpiPen controversy, caused by a six-fold price rise in the popular emergency allergy treatment. In September 2016, Mylan became the subject of a congressional hearing on this subject. The allegations about increased pricing were followed by suggestions that Mylan had been misclassifying EpiPen as a generic, as opposed to as a branded product, in order to benefit from the lower rebate rate available (13%) than the equivalent for branded drugs (23%). In this case, it was of significance that Mylan had a market share of around 90%, and the increase in pricing was accompanied by a direct increase in Mylan’s profits. The US FDA itself was criticised for not intervening more effectively in order to allow competing products to reach the market.

The complex topic of excessive pricing continues to be an issue in the EU more generally. The announcement of the Aspen investigation has led to calls by public interest bodies such as the BEUC for the Commission to carry out EU-wide investigations into whether companies use similar tactics to increase pricing. No doubt, as the case law develops, so will our understanding of when a company’s pricing tactics risk being in breach of Article 102.