Add a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation to the list of problems that Illumina has faced since it acquired Grail for $8 billion in 2021.
Illumina disclosed the investigation in its 10-Q filed with the SEC on Aug. 10: “In July 2023, we were informed that the staff of the SEC was conducting an investigation relating to Illumina and was requesting documents and communications primarily related to Illumina’s acquisition of Grail and certain statements and disclosures concerning Grail, its products and its acquisition, and related to the conduct and compensation of certain members of Illumina and Grail management, among other things. Illumina is cooperating with the SEC in this investigation.”
The news comes about a month after the European Commission fined the company approximately $478.9 million (€432 million) for completing the merger in August 2021 before the Commission had weighed in on whether the deal was anti-competitive. Within weeks of the deal closing, the European Commission deemed that it was anti-competitive.
The company is also appealing a U.S. Federal Trade Commission order to divest Grail.
Regulators are concerned that the merger will hurt competition and innovation around multi-cancer early detection tests.
Illumina started Grail internally in 2016. It later spun it out as a standalone company powered by Illumina’s NGS technology for developing data science and machine learning for enabling multiple cancers in early detection tests. Grail raised approximately $2 billion to support its platform and develop the Galleri multi-cancer screening test.