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EU: Sanofi beats Novo to buy Ablynx for €3.9b

By  |  January 29, 2018

French drugmaker Sanofi has agreed to buy Belgian biotech company Ablynx for €3.9 billion (US$4.8 billion), beating Novo Nordisk and marking its second big deal this month after buying Bioverativ.

The deal is a further sign of accelerating mergers and acquisitions activity in the global biotech sector and comes after Ablynx rejected a €2.6 billion (US$3.2 billion) offer from Denmark’s Novo Nordisk.

Sanofi said on Monday it would pay €45 (US$55.74) per share in cash for Ablynx, a premium of 21.2% over its closing price on Friday, January 26—and more than double the price before Novo went public with its initial offer.

This month has seen a spike in multibillion-dollar deals in biotech, with US-based Celgene paying US$9 billion for cancer specialist Juno Therapeutics, and several experts predicting a bumper year for mergers.

Full Content: Financial Times

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