Teva Pharmaceutical Industries completed the €3.625 billion (US$4.95 billion) acquisition of the German generics company, ratiopharm, on August 10.
It is now claiming to be the largest producer of generics in Europe, as well as being, for some time now, the largest generics producer worldwide. Not bad for a company headquartered in Israel.
Evaluate Pharma, in an analysis published in May this year, indicated that by 2016, Teva could well be one of the top-10 pharmaceutical companies in the world, ahead of more conventional big pharma companies like Bristol-Myers Squibb, Lilly and Amgen.
Consolidation has been rife in the generics sector for a number of years, and could well continue because of the continuing downward pressure put on revenues from generic products, like that seen in Germany with its discount contract system (“The Pink Sheet” DAILY, Aug. 9, 2010).
Other leading players in the generics market, including Novartis’s Sandoz subsidiary, US-headquartered Mylan and the privately held Icelandic firm Actavis, may feel they have to respond to Teva’s M&A strategy, particularly as Teva now has a leadership position in a number of individual European countries. It leads the pack in 10 European countries, and is one of the top three generics companies in seven additional countries.
In order to complete the ratiopharm acquisition, Teva divested 15 products in the Netherlands and one (tramadol) in Hungary because of competition concerns expressed by the European Commission (“The Pink Sheet”, Aug. 9, 2010).
John Davis (j.davis@elsevier.com)
