The FDA sprang a surprise last Friday and approved the first generic exnoxaparin (sanofi’s Lovenox), a low molecular weight heparin. Momenta and Sandoz’ application for this product has been pending for something like five years and although Lovenox was originally approved via the NDA...
Mylan buys Bioniche and gains some critical mass in injectables
Mylan announced today that it will pay $550m to acquire Bioniche, a private-equity owned generics company that specialises in injectable drugs. According to Mylan, Bioniche had turnover of $130m in the 12 months to end May 2010 and we believe that its EBITDA margins...
Claudio Albrecht arrives at Actavis and signals a change of tack by Deutsche Bank
Actavis announced today that Claudio Albrecht has been appointed its new CEO, replacing Siggi Oli Olafsson, who had held the position for the last three years, following the departure of Robert Wessman. As far as we are aware, this was a shareholder-driven move, with...
Abbott buys Piramel’s domestic business and sets a new record for valuations
Abbott announced today that it will pay $3.72bn to acquire the domestic formulations business of the Indian company Nicolas Piramel (Piramel Health Solutions). According to Abbott, this deal will make it the number one supplier to the Indian market, with a market share of...
GSK extends the Aspen model into Asia, buys into Dong A
GSK announced this morning that it has concluded a strategic agreement with Dong-A of South Korea. As with the deal that GSK did with Aspen last year, there are various elements to the agreement, one of which involves GSK taking a 9.9% equity stake...
Protonix court ruling raises prospect of fines for Teva and Sun
The US District Court of New Jersey ruled today that Nycomed’s patent on Protonix, no. 4,758,579, is not invalid, although Teva is still trying to argue that the patent, while valid, should never have been granted due to obviousness-type double patenting. Teva launched a...
Vectura explained? Sandoz buys Oriel Therapeutics
Sandoz announced today that it will pay an undisclosed sum to buy Oriel Therapeutics, a private equity-owned US specialty generics company. Oriel develops respiratory products and comes with its own proprietary technology, FreePath, as well as an associated multidose dry powder inhaler, Solis. It...
Sandoz hands back generic Advair to Vectura; is this telling us something?
Sandoz and Vectura announced today that they have restructured their development agreement for VR315, which is generally believed to be a generic version of GSK’s best-selling asthma combination product, Advair (branded as Seretide in Europe). In summary, what the two companies have agreed is...
Teva (unsurprisingly) wins the ratiopharm auction
Teva announced today that it has made a definitive offer to buy ratiopharm for an EV of €3,625m (€600m of debt repayment and the remainder equity). This represents 2.2x 2009 sales and approximately 11.6x 2009 EBITDA, once the losses at ratiopharm’s biogenerics business are...
Cephalon buys Mepha, but why?
Cephalon announced today that will pay approximately CHF 622.5m ($590m) to acquire Mepha from the Merckle family. Mepha, which used to be part of ratiopharm (also currently the subject of a sale process), is a branded generic company that is the market leader in...