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Late last week, Walgreens Boots Alliance filed an 8-K with the full text of its merger agreement with Rite Aid….The document containing the Agreement and Plan of Merger weighs in at a hefty 137 pages. Below, I highlight four fun facts about the deal’s timing, its termination fees, and what the companies will do to achieve antitrust approval.

1. The deal must be completed before Halloween 2016.
2. If Rite Aid backs out of the deal, then it owes as much as $370 million to Walgreens Boots Alliance.
3. WBA could owe Rite Aid a termination fee as large as $650 million.
4. To get the deal approved, WBA is willing to dump as many as 1,000 stores.

Pharmaceutical companies that make minor tweaks to brand-name drugs in order to blunt competition from cheaper generic treatments may be violating antitrust laws, the Federal Trade Commission said…known as "product-hopping," harms consumers who save billions of dollars each year through generic competition and undermines laws that allow pharmacists to automatically substitute brand-name drugs with low-cost copycats, …"Such conduct could deprive generic companies of their most efficient means of distribution -- automatic substitution at the pharmacy -- and, as a result, maintain the brand’s monopoly through illegal means,"

What’s in a name?..A contentious debate over identifying biosimilars is sparking concern from antitrust regulators. These drugs are designed to emulate expensive biologics and are forecast to save billions of dollars in US health care costs. But finding the best approach for naming biosimilars has confounded regulators and divided the pharmaceutical industry amid clashes over patient safety and the potential for big profits…At issue is whether biosimilars should be given the same name as biologics. Two months ago, the Food and Drug Administration issued draft guidelines that suggested both biologics and biosimilars can use the same name. But the agency also proposed that biosimilar names add a four-letter suffix that differs from the four-letter suffix that should follow a biologic brand name medicine…

..federal appeals court…affirmed the Federal Trade Commission's power to regulate cybersecurity—a decision that follows a number of massive healthcare data breaches over the past year… FTC alleges that Wyndham engaged in unfair cybersecurity practices that exposed consumers' personal data to unauthorized access and theft…FTC doesn't now get involved in many healthcare breach cases,..But it could.

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc.’s deal to acquire Rite Aid Corp. is expected to draw antitrust scrutiny not only because the company would grow to 12,700 locations, but because of what goes on behind the scenes with drug payments…Federal Trade Commission…will look closely at whether the merging of the No. 1 and No. 3 pharmacy chains in the U.S. will lead to higher prices for prescription drugs...the FTC will probably review the approximately $9.4 billion deal market-by-market instead of on a national basis, since CVS, Walgreens, Wal-Mart and Rite Aid together control only about half of the U.S. retail pharmacy market...The rest is held by independent stores, smaller chains and mail-order companies. Walgreens is likely to sell or shutter some stores...