Hearst Pays $4 Million in Settlement
Hearst Corp. has agreed to pay $4 million to settle charges that it did not give antitrust enforcers crucial documents in the pre-merger report when it sought to acquire Media-Span Inc., according to news reports.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charged that Hearst withheld documents that would have disclosed that the deal would create a monopoly in the market for drug data. The civil penalty is the largest ever in U.S. history for such an offense, the report said.
Hearst ultimately included the documents in an amended pre-merger notification filed with the government.
The FTC sued in April to break up the deal consummated in 1998, arguing that the combination of Hearst-owned First DataBank and Medi-Span would spark drastic price increases for databases used by pharmacists and other medial professionals to find out about drug interactions.
First DataBank denied any wrongdoing in a statement.
The FTC is seeking the return of profits from Hearst.
