AstraZeneca Disputes Claims It Bullied Viela Bio into Sale

AstraZeneca Plc claims it lacked the leverage to push biotech firm Viela Bio Inc. into a $3 billion sale to another drug company, as a shareholder has alleged.

The looming antitrust review of AstraZeneca’s $39 billion acquisition of Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. amid Viela’s sale to Horizon Therapeutics Plc took away any advantage AstraZeneca might have had, an attorney for the British pharmaceutical giant told a Delaware judge on Tuesday.

“Regulators were going to be watching. Their whole purpose was to make sure there would be viable competitors, including Viela,” Meredith Kotler of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer US LLP, an attorney for ...