ZURICH: Johnson & Johnson will buy Swiss drugmaker Actelion in a $30 billion deal that both secures promising research and bolsters the product portfolio controlled by the US health care giant.
Accroding to details, much of Actelion’s research operation will be spun off into a separate company in which J&J will own a minority stake. The US conglomerate will then buy Actelion’s seven drugs that are currently on the market and two potential treatments in late-stage testing.
Actelion Chairman Jean-Pierre Garnier told that the research cultures of big and smaller companies often don’t blend well, and they made the spin-off a condition of the deal. The former CEO of British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, confident in Actelion’s pipeline of drugs under development, said that a complete company takeover “would not allow us to grow those fragile flowers”.
J&J will own 16 percent of the new, stand-alone business, which will be based in Switzerland, and have rights to an additional 16 percent.
Structuring such a deal in an industry where companies are often bought for their potential as much as for what they currently produce makes sense to industry analyst Steve Brozak. The president of WBB Securities said the research arms of smaller companies often get bogged down in bureaucracy from bigger companies, and star scientists will flee.
The deal comes a little more than a month after J&J said it had ended talks to buy Actelion, and the Swiss company had said it was in discussions with another party.
Actelion, founded in 1997, specializes in treatments for pulmonary arterial hypertension, which is high blood pressure in the arteries between the heart and lungs. Its products include Tracleer, an oral treatment sold in 60 markets.
J&J said the Actelion portfolio will complement the drug lineup of its Janssen Pharmaceutical subsidiary.
Earlier in the week, J&J announced fourth-quarter profits that topped expectations but gave Wall Street a softer-than-expected 2017 earnings forecast.
