The Court of Appeal (CoA) has upheld earlier conclusions by Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) that Auden Mckenzie and Actavis UK charged excessive prices for hydrocortisone tablets over a decade.
A pack of hydrocortisone tablets was priced less than £1 per pack in 2007, and after eight years it was selling at over £70 per pack. Auden Mckenzie bought the licences for the tablets in 2008.
Auden Mckenzie had ‘de-branded’ the drug, removing it from price regulation and re-launched them as generic drugs at around £4 per pack.
It periodically increased the prices to reach a peak of £72 per pack, it was found.
The price increases did not reflect any increase in costs or investment in the drug, which was first introduced in 1955.
Tens of thousands of people in the UK depend on hydrocortisone tablets, and the NHS annual spending on the drug rose from around £500,000 in 2007 to over £80 million in 2016.
Actavis UK took over Auden Mckenzie’s business in 2015.
When other firms began to develop their own hydrocortisone tablets they were bought off by Auden and later by Actavis, and this delayed competition.
Although other firms did eventually enter the market, Actavis UK retained its prominence and was able to continue charging excessive and unfair prices.
In July 2021, the CMA found that Auden Mckenzie and Actavis UK had abused their dominant position by charging excessive and unfair prices for hydrocortisone tablets between 2008 and 2018, and imposed penalties totalling £266 million.
The CMA also found that Auden/Actavis had entered into anti-competitive agreements with competitors Waymade and AMCo.
In 2023, the CAT rejected the appeals of Auden Mckenzie and Actavis UK and upheld the CMA’s penalties for the abuses.
The firms then appealed to the CoA, which on Thursday (28) dismissed their appeals against the CAT’s judgment.
They found that none of their grounds of appeal ‘get near’ to displacing the CMA’s and the CAT’s conclusions.
