The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday ordered Abbott Laboratories to divest two medical device product lines to settle a complaint that the company's $8.3 billion acquisition of Alere is anticompetitive.
Under the settlement, Abbott will divest the rights and assets for its line of point-of-care blood gas testing systems to Siemens Aktiengelsellschaft and sell its point-of-care cardiac marker testing systems to Quidel Corporation. Abbott will also hand over two Ottawa, Canada-based facilities to Siemens and one San Diego-based facility to Quidel.
Abbott completed its acquisition of Alere in October. The FTC ruled the acquisition would likely hinder competition for these two types of medical devices in a September complaint.
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