Sector News

Categories

Borderless Insights

Image
Negotiating Terms with a New Employer
Image
Beyond Flowers and Platitudes: Reclaiming the Essence of International Women’s Day
Image
Visionary or ‘Stuck-in-the-Mud’? Where are you on Workplace Flexibility?

CRO giant WuXi is going private in a $3.3B deal

August 17, 2015
Life sciences
WuXi PharmaTech, China’s largest CRO, agreed to a $3.3 billion buyout deal that would take it off of Wall Street and into the hands of some private investors.
 
Pending shareholder approval, the Shanghai-headquartered company will cease its U.S. listing in the fourth quarter of this year, selling itself to a newly formed parent company in an all-cash deal that trades $46 for each of WuXi’s American-traded securities. The total represents a 16.5% premium over WuXi’s closing price before the potential deal came to light.
 
WuXi CEO Ge Li first pitched the idea in April, teaming up with Chinese-American investor Ally Bridge Group and penning a note to the board urging a deal. Li and Ally now join the ranks of WuXi’s buyers, alongside Boyu Capital, Temasek Life Sciences, Hillhouse Capital, Ping An Insurance and a group of the company’s executives.
 
The buyers have disclosed little in the way of rationale for taking WuXi private, and Li has said only that it “provides a very attractive opportunity to the company’s shareholders.”
 
Li, a chemist by training, co-founded the company in 2000, hiring up thousands of chemists and buying out its rivals in hopes of cornering the market on outsourced drug development in its native country. WuXi went public in 2007 and has acquired more than a dozen companies ever since, growing to now employ more than 9,000 people and expanding its services into biologics R&D and contract manufacturing.
 
Li’s long-stated goal is for WuXi to evolve beyond the traditional CRO model and “build an open-access capability and technology platform that enables anyone and any company discover and develop therapeutic products to benefit patients.” So far that has meant investing heavily in genomics and emerging technologies like cell therapy, all the while poaching veterans from AstraZeneca, Merck, Medtronic and Eli Lilly to steer its future.
 
By Damian Garde
 

comments closed

Related News

April 20, 2024

CureVac and MD Anderson Cancer Center partner to develop new cancer vaccines

Life sciences

CureVac and the University of Texas’s MD Anderson Cancer Center have announced a co-development and licensing agreement to develop novel messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-based cancer vaccines. The strategic collaboration will focus on the development of differentiated cancer vaccine candidates in selected haematological and solid tumour indications with high unmet medical needs.

Read more
April 20, 2024

FUJIFILM plans $1.2 billion investment in major US manufacturing facility

Life sciences

FUJIFILM Corporation is planning to invest $1.2 billion to expand the planned FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies manufacturing facility in Holly Springs, North Carolina, US. This news follows the organisation’s announcement of a $2 billion investment in the facility in March 2021. This additional financial boost totals the investment to over $3.2 billion, FUJIFILM confirmed.

Read more
April 20, 2024

Sanofi cuts staff in Belgium as early-stage research dwindles

Life sciences

Sanofi’s global restructuring and downsizing is now fully underway, with layoffs stretching to the company’s Belgian offices. Belgian newspaper De Tijd reports that 67 employees have been laid off at a site in Ghent and 32 jobs are on the chopping block at Sanofi’s Belgium HQ in Diegem.

Read more
More news

How can we help you?

We're easy to reach