Met dank aan Alpen.
Crucell ready for more biotech sector M&A
Reuters, Thursday August 14 2008 By Ben Hirschler
LONDON, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Dutch biotech group Crucell is on the look-out for further acquisitions within a consolidating sector and might itself be attractive to a larger player, its chief executive said on Thursday.
"We have over 160 million euros ($240 million) and we're not consuming cash, and that gives us a good position to see what's out there," Ronald Brus told Reuters during a visit to London.
"We're not going to disclose what kind of company we are looking for but there are always possibilities."
Crucell -- one of Europe's larger biotechnology companies with a market value of around $1 billion -- already has a track record of deal-making, after buying Swiss vaccine maker Berna Biotech in 2006.
Brus said Crucell was under no pressure to make further acquisitions but was alert to opportunities, particularly as some rival companies faced cash shortages.
Biotechnology has seen a wave of takeover activity in the last month.
In the United States, Roche is offering $43.7 billion for the rest of Genentech it does not already own and Bristol-Myers Squibb's bid $5.2 billion for ImClone Systems.
On a smaller scale, Sanofi-Aventis -- one of Crucell's key partners -- agreed last month to buy British vaccine firm Acambis for around $550 million, or a 64 percent premium to the prevailing share price.
Brus said Big Pharma companies were under growing pressure to seek new areas of growth within biotech, since future sales of vaccines and antibodies were expected to grow 15-16 percent a year against around 4 percent for pharmaceuticals as a whole.
Crucell shares have risen around 30 percent in the last month, helped by consolidation elsewhere in the sector, which has increased speculation about a bid for the company.
Some analysts have questioned just how attractive Crucell would be to a bigger company, since it has extensive product and technology partnerships with many firms that would deprive an acquirer of certain programmes.
But Brus said he did not believe the existence of such alliances was an obstacle, pointing out that they were common in the biotech sector and could be overcome via settlements.
"If I was a pharmaceutical group looking at a company that had multiple partnerships, I would deal with it like AstraZeneca dealt with Cambridge Antibody Technology and its relationship with Abbott. I don't see that as a stumbling block," he said.
"The segment of vaccines and antibodies is attractive to every pharma company," he added. (Editing by Paul Bolding)