Nestlé aids Allergan deal
US drugmaker AbbVie’s $63bn (€57bn) tie-up with Allergan is getting help from Nestlé and AstraZeneca buying up products the Irish-domiciled company is shedding to placate regulators.
Allergan makes global supplies of its anti-wrinkle treatment Botox at its facility in Westport, Co Mayo.
AbbVie is swallowing Allergan to give it control of Botox and to diversify a portfolio heavily dependent on its $19bn-per-year arthritis drug Humira, the world’s best-selling medicine that is advancing toward US patent expiration.
Swiss food group Nestlé bulked up its medical nutrition business with Allergan’s Zenpep, a product with 2018 sales of $237m which treats people whose pancreases do not provide enough enzymes to digest fats, proteins, and sugars.
Nestlé did not give financial details, but analysts from Zuercher Kantonalbank estimated the takeover could have cost the company more than $1bn.
Meanwhile, AstraZeneca is regaining rights to brazikumab, Allergan’s experimental drug against Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
The European Commission said this month the immunology medicine must be divested because of the risk that its development would be halted after AbbVie’s takeover because of competing medicines.
“These definitive agreements represent significant progress toward the completion of our acquisition of Allergan,” said Richard Gonzalez, AbbVie’s chairman and chief executive.
With regulators wary of the deal’s anti-competitive potential, rivals are getting a chance to stock their own product shelves.
Nestlé CEO Mark Schneider, who also gets Allergan’s Viokace, another pancreatic enzyme product, in today’s deal, is bulking up on nutrition products that combine properties of medicine and food as the Swiss company expands in areas where growth may outpace its mainstream food business.
“This is a significant opportunity for our business in the US,” said Greg Behar, head of Nestlé Health Science, in a statement.
AstraZeneca’s pact for brazikumab marks a return of the inflammation medicine to the British drugmaker’s portfolio. In 2016, Astra had struck a licensing deal with Allergan worth up to $1.5bn for the medicine.
With its return to AstraZeneca, Allergan has agreed to fund development costs for brazikumab in Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, said AstraZeneca.
