Pfizer Close to Purchase of German Generics Firm
From Day, The (New London, CT) (January 20, 2010)
Jan. 20--Just a few months after closing its $67 billion
acquisition of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer Inc. stands ready to
spend another $4 billion or so for Germany's leading maker of
generic medications, according to news reports.
The New York-based Pfizer and Israeli generics maker Teva
Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. are bidding for Germany's Ratiopharm
in a battle that pits the largest drug firm in the world against
the leading provider of off-patent medications, according to the
German business newspaper Handelsblatt.
The newspaper said another firm, the Swedish private-equity company
EQT, also had been bidding, but appeared unlikely to prevail over
Pfizer and Teva, according to a Reuters news service report. Dow
Jones Newswires reported last week that Actavis Group of Iceland
also was interested in Ratiopharm, one of the world's top five
suppliers of generic medicines.
"Both would be buyers are emblematic of the shifting landscape,"
said The Wall Street Journal Health Blog. "Pfizer ... has been
moving away from the blockbuster-drug model and towards a more
diversified business that includes a growing generics unit. Teva
... gets about 30 percent of its revenues from branded drugs, and
has a market cap of more than $50 billion (higher than Eli Lilly's)
and ambitious growth plans."
The increasing competitiveness of the two companies had been
revealed again late last week when Pfizer asked a U.S. federal
court in Delaware to block Teva from selling a generic form of the
antibiotic Zyvox. Pfizer cited patent infringement in its suit,
which sought an injunction against Teva and said Zyvox was
protected from generic competition until at least 2014, according
to Reuters.
Pfizer, with major research-and-development campuses in Groton and
New London, has been diversifying its portfolio of medicines in
recent months. Earlier this year, it announced a deal to sell 40
generic drugs manufactured by Strides Arcolab of India, and last
year Pfizer entered into similar agreements with the Indian
generics firms Aurobindo Pharma Ltd. and Claris Lifesciences
Ltd.
Pfizer does not comment about reported deals it is
contemplating.
Teva said earlier this year that it expects to double its revenues
in the next five years. Teva had been expected, along with France's
Sanofi-Aventis, to be among the most active suitors for
Ratiopharm.
In 2004, when Pfizer had a different business model, it sold to
Teva its generics marketing company called Dorom, then one of the
two largest suppliers of off-patent medicines in Italy. The deal
cost Teva about $91 million, according to reports at the
time.
Posted: January 2010
