Brussels, 23/01/2004 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has cleared the acquisition of the British diagnostic pharmaceuticals and biosciences company, Amersham, by the US giant, General Electric (GE). The move was carried out for the sum of EUR 8.1 billion via an exchange of securities at the price of 800 pence/GE share for every Amersham share. It will allow GE to increase its turnover in the medical sector to $13 billion, with 40,000 employed. Amersham made a turnover of EUR 2.3 billion in 2002 and employs 10,000. Given the fact that GE and Amersham products are complementary in the medical sector and that, for some imaging applications, hospitals need to purchase both the hardware and the pharmaceuticals, the Commission focused its analysis on any possible conglomerate effects arising from the merger. GE could, for example, have the incentive to offer bundles of products, by proposing a better price than for the sum of the individual products or by designing its products in such a way that Amersham's products would work better with GE than with rival equipment. It reached the conclusion that this scenario would not be very likely as neither GE nor Amersham hold a dominant position as far as their respective products in Europe are concerned. Furthermore, there is strong competition in the sector with Philips, Siemens, Toshiba, Schering, Bristol Myers Squibb, Tyco/Mallinckrodt and Bracco. Finally, the Commission noted that there was perfect interoperability between the different existing equipment and pharmaceutical products.