Novartis would like to get its hands on Amneal Pharmaceuticals, the American company specializing in the production of generic drugs. According to rumors of Bloomberg, the deal could cost the Swiss company up to eight billion dollars and would strengthen Sandoz, Novartis' generics unit. Thus, after having strengthened its activity in the oncology sector and having sold the vaccine unit to GlaxoSmithKline, the Swiss company is preparing to make other important choices for its business, while continuing to think about the future of the ophthalmic branch, alcon. According to Joerg Reinhardt, president of Novartis, the ophthalmology unit "has not developed in the last two years as we expected". So it's time either to recover or to go under another company. “We are focusing on pushing the turnaround forward, but we are keeping all options open,” Reinhardt stressed.
The scenario of generics
The Amneal operation, on the other hand, could give a boost to Sandoz, which has lagged behind its main competitors Teva and Mylan. First of all, also due to the pressure on drug prices, there has been a slowdown in sales. Furthermore, despite the new generic approvals, these "would have been lower than rivals," at least according to Ronny Gal, an analyst at Bernstein. Teva and Mylan have also made some big acquisitions lately.
Teva recently completed a $40 billion purchase of Allergan generics, while Mylan finalized a $5.7 billion generics deal from Abbott Laboratories outside the U.S. last year. Negotiations between Novartis and Amneal are therefore underway, but – according to rumors – the generics company is working with a consultant who is exploring various possibilities. And therefore he could also be in contact with other potential buyers. Amneal's products are more than a hundred and range from pills to creams, patches, injectable and inhaled drugs. In recent years the company has grown thanks to the purchase of products from Merck, Pfizer, Actavis and Warner Chilcott. In addition, it also purchased a specialty medicines manufacturing plant in Ireland last year.
All of this leads it to bill itself as the seventh largest generics producer in the US and the fastest growing in the world. The business of this company, however, would reconcile well with Sandoz, while the same cannot be said of Alcon and Novartis. And the future of the ophthalmic branch is uncertain. In a restructuring announced earlier this year, Novartis split its eye medicines business from its consumer products and surgical devices businesses. The former CEO of Hospira, Michael Ball, has been called to lead the latter, who, by strengthening marketing, has recorded a certain growth in Europe, not so evident, however, in the USA. So much so that sales were down 3% for the third quarter.
