Strides Arcolab sold 94% stake in its subsidiary Ascent Pharma health to Watson Pharmaceuticals

BANGALORE: Bangalore-based Strides Arcolab on Tuesday sold 94% stake in its subsidiary Ascent Pharmahealth to Watson Pharmaceuticals for an undisclosed amount. Post this transaction Ascent, which has operations in Australia and Southeast Asia, is valued at AU$ 375 million.

As a part of the deal pharmaceutical company Watson acquired the remaining 6% shares of the CEO of Ascent, Dennis Bastas.

“We have been clear about our intention to focus on our highly attractive steriles segment, which we expect to be our growth engine going forward. The transaction further facilitates the execution of this strategy and unlocks significant value for the Group and considerably strengthens our balance sheet, ” said Arun Kumar, Executive Vice Chairman and Group CEO of Strides Arcolab in s statement.

The sterile segment business of Strides comes under Agila Specialties, a specialties unit of Strides Arcolab which was spun off as a separate division with focused on key areas like oncolytics, pencillins, peptides and biosimilars.

The acquisition will help Watcon to create a considerable generics business in Australia and Southeast Asia. “The acquisition of Ascent provides Watson with a successful commercial structure in both Australia and Southeast Asia and a broader pipeline of products to support continued growth,” says Paul Bisaro, President and CEO of Watson.

US-based Watson 's portfolio development, manufacturing, marketing and distribution of generic pharmaceuticals and specialized branded pharmaceutical products focused on Urology and Women's Health.

As per the statement released by Strides Arcolab, partnership with Ascent generated a huge economic benefit to the company over the last six months, mainly due to transformation of Ascent into a vertically integrated generic business with a healthy portfolio of newly developed and marketed pipeline products.

Jefferies International acted as the financial advisor to the transaction.