Aventis Declines Sanofi Offer of $61 Billion

In a move to create the third largest pharmaceutical company in the world, Sanofi-Synthelabo SA (Paris, France) has made a hostile bid of U.S.$61 billion for Aventis SA (Strasbourg, France), which has been declined. However, industry analysts say this may be only the first phase of a long takeover fight.

According to Sanofi, the combined company would benefit from a large portfolio of high-growth drugs, with nine products that individually generated sales of more than $600 million in 2003 and firmly established positions in high-growth fields such as cardiovascular, thrombosis, diabetes, central nervous system, urology, internal medicine, and vaccines. The offer has already been approved by Sanofi's board.

"After a review and consideration of the terms and conditions of the unsolicited offer put forward by Sanofi-Synthelabo on Monday, January 26, 2004, the Supervisory Board of Aventis has unanimously concluded today that this bid is not in the best interest of Aventis shareholders and employees. Consequently, the Supervisory Board recommends to the shareholders of Aventis to reject this hostile bid,” Jurgen Dormann, chairman, and Jean-Rene Fourtou, vice chairman.




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