Biocon scouts for acquisition to boost pharma business
Bangalore, Aug. 20 (PTI): Biotech firm Biocon Ltd is scouting for acquisitions and may list its shares on international bourses in its effort to strengthen its pharmaceutical business.
"We will look at inorganic growth. We are definitely having a strategy to look for an appropriate opportunity. We are looking at how to grow our pharmaceutical business," Biocon Chairman and Managing Director Kiran Mazumdar Shaw told PTI in an interview.
"We will look at an international listing. That's a very important objective for us," Shaw said, adding that "we will do it at a time when we are really in a position to partner one of our programmes at a very, very high valuation."
Biocon made a string of announcements in the last couple of months like striking agreements with NASDAQ-listed Abraxis Bioscience and Invitrgogen, setting up a joint venture in Dubai and divesting its enzymes business for USD 115 million.
"We focus strongly, and have created an infrastructure to address global scale. Now, we are looking at how do we access global markets," she said.
Shaw said the Middle-East as a very large market and the company plans to take advantage of this market.
Mazumdar-Shaw said the company would invest more on its discovery programmes, which has shown a "lot of promise" and needed investment to "unlock huge value".
"We divested our enzymes business so that the realisation can be used to invest into promising research programmes," she said.
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