No­vo Nordisk’s sur­prise $9 bil­lion of­fer for obe­si­ty drug­mak­er Met­sera could be the first ma­jor test of how the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s FTC grap­ples with com­plex phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal merg­ers.

The bid looks to pit two op­pos­ing forces against each oth­er: new FTC lead­er­ship that has promised a lighter touch com­pared to the Biden-era Lina Khan regime, and a Trump White House that has pledged to low­er drug prices by any means nec­es­sary.

The mat­ter could rip­ple across the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor that re­lies on deal­mak­ing, and through the fast-grow­ing obe­si­ty mar­ket where ac­cess is in­creas­ing­ly a hot po­lit­i­cal top­ic.

No­vo and the FTC did­n't im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to re­quests for com­ment.

De­spite boast­ing a $1.5 bil­lion sales beat, Eli Lil­ly’s earn­ings were over­shad­owed by its top com­peti­tor No­vo Nordisk's ef­forts to usurp Pfiz­er in a bid­ding war over clin­i­cal-stage obe­si­ty biotech Met­sera.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from an in­vestor about “some of the be­hav­iors that we're see­ing in the mar­ket around M&A,” a not-so-sub­tle ref­er­ence to the dra­ma, Lil­ly CEO David Ricks said hav­ing a promis­ing obe­si­ty drug is one thing — but sell­ing it is an­oth­er chal­lenge.

“It's al­so im­por­tant to note, in ad­di­tion to in­no­va­tion, you need to ex­e­cute,” Ricks said. “This is a high­ly-scaled busi­ness and reach­ing po­ten­tial­ly tens or even hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple.” Ricks added that Lil­ly is “fo­cused on de­fend­ing” its fron­trun­ner sta­tus.

Mer­ck CEO Rob Davis said on Thurs­day that the com­pa­ny is as­sess­ing ways to bring in new as­sets “with ur­gency.”

The com­ments sig­nal Mer­ck’s con­tin­ued ap­petite for deals as the com­pa­ny bol­sters its pipeline ahead of an im­pend­ing patent cliff for its top-sell­ing can­cer drug Keytru­da. On Thurs­day’s third-quar­ter earn­ings call, Davis praised Mer­ck’s re­cent ac­qui­si­tion of Verona Phar­ma and its com­mer­cial res­pi­ra­to­ry drug — one of the largest deals in the in­dus­try this year — but said “we do need to do more.”

“We’re not done,” Davis said on the call. “If we see val­ue, we'll move.”