EU fines US firm Illumina $475 million for jumping gun on buying cancer-screening company Grail

By RAF CASERT
Associated Press

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union has slapped a $475 million fine on U.S. biotech giant Illumina for buying out cancer-screening company Grail without the approval of the 27-nation bloc’s antitrust watchdog. Illumina had announced an $7.1 billion acquisition of Grail in 2020, but the EU’s executive commission said it broke the bloc’s merger rules by moving ahead to complete the deal without its consent. The fine was announced Wednesday. Concerns over stifled competition already have led the EU to block the merger and U.S. regulators to order Illumina to reverse the deal. Illumina is a major supplier of next-generation sequencing systems for genetic and genomic analysis, while Grail is developing blood tests to try to catch cancer early.