PARIS (Reuters) -A consortium led by French private equity firm PAI Partners has submitted a new, higher offer for Sanofi’s consumer health business Opella, a source close to the matter said on Thursday, confirming reports in French media.
PAI is seeking to outbid U.S. rival Clayton Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) for a controlling 50% stake in Opella, the maker of one of France’s most-sold painkillers, Doliprane.
The source said the PAI-led consortium had hiked its bid by 200 million euros ($217.2 million) in a revised offer sent earlier on Thursday to Sanofi’s Chairman Frederic Oudea.
They declined to elaborate on the exact price offered for the stake in Opella, which is valued at more than 15 billion euros.
The revised bid is valid until Sunday night, the source added. Sanofi and CD&R declined to comment.
Sanofi, France’s biggest pharmaceutical group, said last week it was in talks with CD&R for the sale of a 50% controlling stake of Opella, triggering criticism from both the right and left of France’s political spectrum over concerns France could lose a strategic asset.
The French government made pledges during the COVID-19 pandemic to restore self-sufficiency in healthcare. Labour unions had called for a strike at Sanofi’s plants in France on Thursday amid fears that a sale to CD&R could result in job losses.
“Doliprane must stay in France. It belongs to the French,” CFDT union coordinator and Sanofi production technician Adil Bensetra said outside the Compiegne plant in northern France during Thursday’s protest.
“We have already given up too much in terms of French industry… We cannot give up health.”
“We have elections in the United States with a Donald Trump who has always had an ‘American First’ policy,” he added.
“(Trump) could say that all the manufacturing today of these products that are made in France and Europe should be relocated to the United States.”
In its revised bid, PAI pledged to preserve headcount and raise investments at Opella’s French production sites of Lisieux in Normandy and Compiegne, the source said. It also vowed to keep Opella’s headquarters in France, the same source added.
($1 = 0.9204 euros)
(Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain, Dominique Patton and Lucien Libert; Editing by Mark Potter and Jan Harvey)
