Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Bloomberg: Merck to Sell Its 50 Percent Stake in Merial To Sanofi; Announcement Pending


Originally, this was a Reuters report, but now Bloomberg is carrying it, as well:

. . . .Sanofi-Aventis SA agreed to buy Merck & Co.’s stake in their Merial animal-health venture to help the French drugmaker weather generic competition to its best-selling drugs, said two people familiar with the situation.

The acquisition is set to be announced this week, said the people, who declined to be identified as an official announcement hasn’t been made. They didn’t disclose the price of the transaction. The stake may be worth about 2 billion euros ($2.8 billion), according to Eric Le Berrigaud, an analyst at Raymond James in Paris. . . .

We shall see. At least to my understanding, it would not preclude a deal for some parts of Intervet -- though it would make a large deal, on that front, rather unlikely.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The good news for Merck is that even if they have no long term interest in animal health they can close the SP acquisition without having to do anything about Intervet. If, down the road, they want to divest Intervet they already have a large amount of due diligence materials already prepared that would just need to be updated.

Anonymous said...

The good news for Merck is that even if they have no long term interest in animal health they can close the SP acquisition without having to do anything about Intervet. If, down the road, they want to divest Intervet they already have a large amount of due diligence materials already prepared that would just need to be updated.

Anonymous said...

"anonymous" (me) seems to have a habit of double-clicking on "publish". Sorry

Condor said...

Quite so -- but do not fret over double posts -- all comments are welcome here.

Thanks -- we'll both stay tuned to see if Sanofi (and Merck) make it "official" later in the week.

I do expect, longer-term, that Merck CEO Clark will sell off at least some of the Intervet business-lines.

Do stop back!

Namaste

Condor said...

And now, a ready-made structure for the DIVESTITURE of some or all of Intervet (see the UPDATE to that post -- Sanofi's webcast slides)!

Good call, anonymous!

Double post all you want -- you were spot on, it seems.

Namaste