Swiss Lonza may buy Capsugel for $ 5 billion

Swiss pharmaceutical company Lonza is in negotiations with the American investment company KKR & Co LP to purchase its owned Capsugel, a manufacturer of drug delivery systems. The deal could be worth more than $5 billion.

Negotiations for the acquisition could be concluded by December 15.

Earlier this year, Lonza attempted to buy another manufacturer of innovative drug dosage forms, Catalent, but the deal did not materialize.

KKR & Co LP acquired Capsugel from Pfizer in 2011 for $2.6 billion, but in March 2016, the investment company decided to sell this asset.

Swiss Lonza is one of the three largest contract manufacturers for the pharmaceutical industry, alongside Samsung Biologics and Boehringer Ingelheim.

Lonza Group is a Swiss pharmaceutical company founded in 1897. Lonza's market capitalization is $9.42 billion. The company's revenue for the first half of 2016 was approximately $1.97 billion, with a profit of $190 million. By the end of the first half of 2016, the company had 9.9 thousand employees.

Capsugel is an American manufacturer of drug delivery systems (capsules, tablet forms, and others), founded in 1931 and based in Morristown, New Jersey. Capsugel produces over 200 billion solid capsules and over 3 billion finished dosage units per year, serving the needs of approximately 4,000 customers from more than 100 countries. The revenue of its Russian subsidiary in 2015 amounted to 336 million rubles, with a profit of 25 million.