Mylan poised to announce takeover of Meda
Mylan, the generic drugmaker, is poised to announce a takeover of Sweden’s Meda, according to people briefed on the deal.
The takeover of Meda, which has a market value of roughly SEK 31.4bn, or $3.7bn, could be announced later today*.
Mylan first tried to buy Meda in 2014, but its offer was rejected, write David Crow, Arash Massoudi, and Andrew Ward.
The company, one of the world’s largest makers of copycat generic drugs, has been looking for a deal since it failed to buy Perrigo in a $27bn hostile takeover last year.
The deal ends a three-year saga during which Meda rejected a previous $9bn bid from Mylan as well as an approach from Sun Pharma of India. The Swedish company instead pursued its own expansion with a $3.1bn acquisition of Rottapharm of Italy in 2014 and its chief executive, Jörg-Thomas Dierks, declared: “Either you eat or you will be eaten”.
The sale of Meda risks a further hollowing out of Sweden’s pharmaceuticals sector, which in the past two decades has seen Pharmacia bought by Pfizer of the US and Astra merged with Zeneca of the UK.
The company’s biggest shareholder with 23 per cent is Stena Sessan, the Swedish shipping group controlled by the Olsson business family.
Generic drugmakers, which produce cheap, off-patent medicines, have been at the heart of the wider boom in pharmaceuticals dealmaking over the past two years as manufacturers have sought greater scale and efficiency. Other transactions have included the $41bn acquisition of Allergan’s generics business by Teva of Israel, the world’s biggest generics maker by sales.
US and European generic drugmakers have been facing increasing low-cost competition from Indian rivals and pressure on pricing as governments seek to contain rising healthcare costs.