Welcome back to Emlex's weekly podcast covering the top international regulatory stories of the week.

I'm James Panicki from Emlex's Asia Pacific team, it's great to have your company again.

This week, why Illumina's proposed $7.1 billion US dollar acquisition of cancer diagnostic

startup Grail has found itself in choppy waters of late. On March the 30th, the US Federal Trade

Commission challenged the deal, with the FTC suggesting that Illumina would

have both the incentive and the ability to disadvantage Grail's competitors by denying

them access to Illumina's essential next-generation sequencing technology.

It's a fascinating case which takes in the challenges of vertical mergers and also tells us something

about what regulators see as the growing threat of so-called killer acquisitions.

Mlex's M&A team has been following the deal with great interest.

Flavia Fortes is Emlex's global head of mergers and she joins me now from Rome in Italy.

Curtis Eichelberger covers mergers and acquisitions from Washington, D.C.,

and he's also on the line right now.

Flavia, starting from you, tell me something about why this case is indeed unique.

Hi, James. Thanks for having me.

Certainly.

So this is an important case because it's the first time in decades that the FTC is challenging

a vertical transaction in court.

It's the first case under the Biden administration and the acting FTC chair, Rebecca Slaughter.

And it's also the first challenge in court under the newly

issue vertical merger guidelines. So there's a lot of firsts here. This is also a case where

the complaint alleges non-price harms, particularly innovation, which makes it unique because

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