Brussels Clears Roches Corange Deal

Roche, the Swiss pharmaceuticals group, has won European Union regulatory clearance for its $11bn takeover of Corange, a private Bermuda-based company which owns the German diagnostics company Boehringer Mannheim, by agreeing to sell most of its clinical chemistry in-vitro diagnostics business. It will also have to offer more licences for PCR, the technique used in diagnostics and DNA fingerprinting to detect genetic material. A five month antitrust investigation by the European Commission concluded that Roche's takeover of Corange, a leading medical diagnostics specialist, would squeeze competition in clinical chemistry. The Commission said the concessions, which it will monitor closely, were enough to reduce the parties' market shares and strength in the relevant national and product markets.