Biocon—controlled by Indian pharmaceutical billionaire Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw—is buying the rest of privately held subsidiary Biocon Biologics to consolidate its biosimilars and generics drug businesses.
The Bengaluru, India-based company will buy the stakes held by Serum Institute Life Sciences, Tata Capital and Activ Pine by swapping 70.28 Biocon shares for every 100 Biocon Biologics shares, at a price of 405.78 rupees ($4.51) per Biocon share, according to a statement released over the weekend. The deal, slated to be completed in March subject to regulatory approvals, values Biocon Biologics at $5.5 billion, it said.
Separately, India-listed Biocon also said it will also buy the shares held by Pittsburgh-based Viatris in Biocon Biologics for $815 million, paying $400 million in cash and $415 million in Biocon shares. The company also plans to raise up to 45 billion rupees ($500 million) by selling shares to institutional investors, with the proceeds going toward the cash payment to Viatris.
“The integration of Biocon Biologics into Biocon represents the next chapter in our evolution,” Mazumdar-Shaw, executive chairwoman of Biocon said in the statement. “Strategically, Biocon will be one of the few companies offering both biosimilars and generics at a global scale”.
The company said that integrating Biocon Biologics will simplify its corporate structure and strengthen Biocon’s position in diabetes, oncology and immunology medications, which together make up nearly 40% of global pharmaceutical industry’s revenues.
With an estimated net worth of $3.6 billion based on Forbes’ real-time data, Mazumdar-Shaw, is among the wealthiest in India. She founded Biocon in 1978 and turned it into a biopharmaceutical giant. The company acquired U.S. drugmaker Viatris’ biosimilars business for $3.3 billion in 2022. Biocon-backed cancer therapy drug maker Bicara Therapeutics raised $362 million in its IPO on Nasdaq last year.