European Union regulators dropped a probe into AstraZeneca Plc (AZN), the U.K.’s second-biggest drugmaker, and Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. (4502)’s Nycomed unit over possible collusion to keep cheaper copies of medicines off the market. “Our investigation did not enable us to conclude that AstraZeneca and Nycomed had infringed EU antitrust rules,” Antoine Colombani, a spokesman for the European Commission, said in an e-mail. “We are taking the issue of possible hindering or delaying of generic entry very seriously and we have several other ongoing antitrust investigations in the pharmaceutical sector.”
