The world’s biggest generic drug maker is getting bigger with the announcement this morning that Israel’s Teva Pharmaceutical had won the bidding against Pfizer for Germany’s Ratiopharm Group. The pricetag: $4.97 billlion.
A bidding contest had been dragging on for months for Ratiopharm, the world’s sixth largest generics maker. The deal is the biggest takeover in the generic drugs market since Teva bought U.S.-based Barr Pharmaceuticals for $7.46 billion in 2008.
Others interested in the company included another generic maker, Actavis Group of Iceland, but Pfizer, which has been very interested in expanding its generics operations, was the last man standing in the competition against Teva, Dow Jones Newswires reported. It said Pfizer had been very interested in a deal, but the U.S. company, now the world’s largest pharma company, wasn’t prepared to put significantly more than 3 billion euros (about $4.1 billion) on the table.
Pfizer, facing the expiration of patent protection on Lipitor starting next year, the biggest selling drug of all time, has been shifting away from the blockbuster-drug model and embracing more diversification through avenuess such as generics. Pfizer could consider German pharmaceutical company Stada Arzneimittel down the road if it wanted to make up for the loss of Ratiopharm, DJ Newswires said.
While already the worlds biggest generics company, Teva gets about 30% of its revenues from branded drugs.
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