BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Europe’s top court on Tuesday backed U.S. gene sequencing company Illumina’s fight against EU antitrust investigations into its $7.1 billion bid for cancer diagnostic test maker Grail.
“The European Court of Justice has set aside the General Court’s judgment and invalidated the decisions by which the Commission had accepted applications from national competition authorities seeking to examine the proposed concentration,” the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union said.
The General Court had ruled in 2022 in favour of the European Commission.
Illumina, which founded and then spun off Grail in 2016 only to reacquire it in 2021 for $7.1 billion, had fought the European Commission’s rarely used power called Article 22 to assess the deal even though it was below the EU’s merger revenue threshold.
The cases are C-611/22 P Illumina v Commission and C-625/22 P Grail v Commission.