(Reuters) - Novo Holdings, the controlling shareholder of Novo Nordisk, on Wednesday sealed its $16.5 billion deal for Catalent, as the Danish drugmaker looks to boost supplies of its widely popular weight-loss drug Wegovy.

Novo Nordisk will take control of three fill-finish facilities of the contract drug manufacturer in Italy, Belgium, and the U.S. as part of the deal. These sites will then be fully utilized by the company to fill its injection pens.

Novo Holdings agreed to buy Catalent in February, and several U.S. consumer groups and two large labor unions in October urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to block the deal.

However, the FTC did not challenge the deal, and earlier this month European antitrust regulators also cleared the transaction after they found there were sufficient competing alternatives in the market.

Novo Nordisk launched Wegovy in the U.S. in 2021 and in 15 other countries since then.

The drug, chemically known as semaglutide, is part of a top-selling class of drugs designed to mimic the action of the GLP-1 hormone, which helps regulate blood sugar, slow digestion and decrease appetite.

The soaring demand for these popular medicines has led to tight supply and companies, including Eli Lilly, which makes the rival drug Zepbound, have been working to ramp up production.

Analysts estimate the obesity drug market could be worth as much as $150 billion globally per year in the next decade.

Novo Holdings and Catalent on Saturday disclosed that all regulatory conditions to close the deal were fulfilled.

(Reporting by Bhanvi Satija and Mariam Sunny in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel and Sriraj kalluvila)

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