Sanofi confirmed the rumor. This Friday, the French pharmaceutical firm announced “that it had entered into negotiations with CD & R for the potential sale of a majority stake of 50% of the assets of Opella, its consumer health sector”. A press release which confirms information revealed Thursday evening by Les Echos. According to our colleagues, the American investment fund CD & R will pay 15 billion euros to take control of Opella, particularly famous for marketing Doliprane.
Based in France, Opella, which employs more than 11,000 people, is present in 100 countries around the world and has 13 production factories. Its catalog includes around a hundred references, some of which are well known such as Doliprane, but also Novanight, Lysopaïne and Maalox. Most are medicines available without a prescription or vitamins. To justify this choice of sale, Sanofi mentions in its press release Opella’s “desire for independence” which is aligned with “Sanofi’s strategy of focusing on innovative medicines and vaccines”. In 2023, sales of the consumer subsidiary increased by 6.3% to reach 5.2 billion euros in turnover.
CD&R, also called Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, is one of the oldest American investment funds and one of the most powerful in the world. The choice of the American company would have been preferred to that made by the French fund PAI Partners. According to I will presentthe latter would not have been able to secure financial assistance from Bpifrance to complete the transaction.
A danger for the sovereignty of France?
Questioned before this information was made official, health economist Samira Guennif estimated that “the risk is to see the production of medicines being delocalized, and that France will lose even more of this health autonomy”. The teacher at the UFR health, medicine and human biology at Sorbonne Paris Nord University recalled this observation established during the Covid-19 crisis: “Today, most of the medicines sold in France are produced abroad . »
