When China's Ministry of Commerce ("MOFCOM") approved Pfizer's $68 billion acquisition of rival pharmaceutical company Wyeth in last September, the Chinese anti-trust authority for the first time applied business divestiture as a structural remedy in its merger control review. According to MOFCOM's conditional clearance decision, Pfizer was required to divest its PRC swine mycoplasmal pneumonia vaccine business to an approved third party to address anti-competitive concerns. To satisfy the condition, Pfizer sold its swine vaccine business in China to Harbin Pharmaceutical Group for approximately US$50 million in May. There are however concerns that divestiture has been applied without any official guidance which should have been put into place to ensure consistency of implementation of future divestiture in conditional clearance decisions. To address these concerns, on the 5th of July MOFCOM issued its Tentative Provisions on the Implementation of Assets or Business Divestiture for Concentrations of Business Operators ("Provisions"). By setting forth detailed procedures and requirements, these Provisions provide a clearer procedural guidance on implementation of divestiture commitments.
This article was written for Law-Now, CMS Cameron McKenna's free online information service. To register for Law-Now, please go to www.law-now.com/law-now/mondaq
Law-Now information is for general purposes and guidance only. The information and opinions expressed in all Law-Now articles are not necessarily comprehensive and do not purport to give professional or legal advice. All Law-Now information relates to circumstances prevailing at the date of its original publication and may not have been updated to reflect subsequent developments.
The original publication date for this article was 05/08/2010.
