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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Novartis to buy France’s Advanced Accelerator in $3.9 billion cash deal

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ZURICH: Swiss drugmaker Novartis on Monday offered to buy France’s Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA) in a $3.9 billion cash deal to strengthen the oncology portfolio at the world’s biggest maker of prescription medicines.


Basel-based Novartis’s offer of $41 per ordinary share and $82 per American depositary share represents a 47 per cent premium to AAA’s price. It said it would finance the deal with debt.


Novartis is seeking to add AAA’s radio-pharmaceuticals that use trace amounts of radioactive compounds to not only create functional images of organs and lesions but also to treat diseases like cancer.


AAA’s flagship product, Lutathera, won European Union backing in late September for use against gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumours, the kind of cancer that killed Apple founder Steve Jobs.


“Novartis has a strong legacy in the development and commercialisation of medicines for neuroendocrine tumours where significant unmet need remains for patients,” Bruno Strigini, head of Novartis Oncology, said in a statement. — Reuters


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