Within a year of buying out Teva's UK and Ireland assets and breaking into the top 20 generics players club, Intas Pharmaceuticals is on the prowl again for a larger piece of Teva’s existing operations in Europe.
The closely held Ahmedabad-based drug maker, which has Temasek and Chrys Capital as its investors, is bidding for Teva’s women's health, oncology and pain management divisions in Europe for $1.5 billion, said multiple sources aware of the ongoing negotiations.
Intas has reached out to several Indian and global banks–ICICI, Axis, Citi, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ, HSBC among others–to finalise the financing before putting in a binding bid by the end of this month. If successful, this will be the largest cross border M&A involving an Indian pharma company.
Teva, the world’s largest maker of generic drugs, plans to divest some assets including its global women’s health and European cancer and pain-treatment divisions to reduce debt. The drugmaker last year paid about $40.5 billion to buy the generics business from Allergan Plc just as prices of cheap copycat drugs began to fall. The ill-timed move saddled the company with almost $36 billion in debt, forcing Teva to slash its profit forecast twice, and eventually led to the exit of chief executive Erez Vigodman in February. Its divestments in the UK in 2016 were mandated by the antitrust authority as part the Allergan takeover.
(Courtesy:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/biotech/pharmaceuticals/intas-eyes-tevas-oncology-womens-health-divisions-in-europe/articleshow/60010683.cms)