The Italian competition authority (Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato – AGCM) has decided to discontinue an investigation of 7 suppliers of radiopharmaceutical medicines. The decision, adopted on 21 May 2024 and published in the AGCM “bulletin” on 10 June 2024 (see, attachment, at pages 11 and following), is the outcome of a probe of Curium, GE Healthcare, Novartis, that firm’s subsidiary Advanced Accelerator Applications, and others because of suspicions that these parties had divided supply quotas when supplying radiopharmaceutical medicines to public and private hospitals in response to tender proceedings. The case relied on evidence furnished by an unidentified leniency applicant and further proof collected by AGCM during dawn raids.
 
While the case had started auspiciously from its perspective, AGCM eventually reached the conclusion that it was not able to demonstrate a form of collusion to the requisite standard of proof. AGCM attributed this lack of decisive evidence to the specific nature of the product (mainly fluorodeoxyglucose or [F]FDG). Radiopharmaceuticals such as [F]FDG have a very short shelf life and require expensive and scarce production facilities (cyclotrons). Additionally, the customer-hospitals impose on their providers stringent supply obligations with adequate back-up systems.  According to AGCM, these characteristics cause a degree of cooperation among suppliers to be inevitable. AGCM considered that the cooperation which actually took place had not exceeded the level necessary to ensure supplies to the hospitals.
 
The outcome of this case stands in contrast with findings of the Spanish competition authority which in February 2021 ruled against Novartis and Curium and imposed a fine of EUR 5,76 million (see, Van Bael & Bellis Life Sciences News and Insights of 9 February 2021).