By Jof Enriquez
The European Commission said it is temporarily stopping its review of the proposed merger between orthopedics companies Zimmer Holdings and Biomet pending additional information from Zimmer.
In a recent statement, Zimmer said that regulators declared that the initial notification it submitted with its bid for Biomet lacked some details, but added that it is working with the Commission to provide the requested additional information to be submitted at a future, unspecified date. It did not specify what type of information was missing from the original submission.
“The notification that the Commission received was incomplete,” Commission spokesman for competition policy Antoine Colombanni said in a Reuters article. The Commission received the documents on June 3.
The Commission scrapped the original deadline of July 9 for the submission of documents for the proposed merger, and said it would announce a new deadline soon, according to the Zimmer press release. Zimmer said the deal is still expected to close in the first quarter of 2015.
