Ahead of merger with Pfizer's generic unit, Mylan makes $757M+ purchase for European thrombosis portfolio
Mylan is increasing its presence in Europe with a high-dollar acquisition of a blood clot portfolio.
The generic drugmaker is paying more than three-quarters of a billion dollars to gobble up Aspen Pharmacare’s thrombosis business on the continent. The exact sum of €641.9 million, or about $757 million, will be divvied up into an upfront payment of about 41% of the total, with the remaining being deferred to next June.

Tuesday’s deal, which is expected to close at the end of 2020, “will not only make Mylan the second largest supplier of these products to patients in Europe, according to IQVIA, but also bolster our existing commercial infrastructure to further expand access to complex injectables,” Mylan president Rajiv Malik said in a statement.
Aspen, a pharmaceutical company based in South Africa, will retain the licensing rights to its thrombosis drugs in emerging markets. The drugmaker saw shares go up 6% in off-hour trading, while Mylan stock perked up a little over 2%.
With the acquisition, Mylan gains access to anticoagulants sold under the brand names Arixtra, Fraxiparine, Mono-Embolex and Orgaran, which netted a combined sales total of about $272 million in the 12-month period ending June 2020. Aspen will be manufacturing and supplying the products, whereas Mylan will acquire commercialization rights and related intellectual property of the business.
That includes product registrations and marketing authorizations, in addition to buying out the European portfolio.
There isn’t expected to be any overlap with this transaction and the merger of Mylan and Pfizer-spinout Upjohn, initiated in July 2019. That deal is also expected to close before 2020 is out, Mylan said Tuesday, and will involve renaming the combined company to Viatris.
The merger originally came together after the US generics market saw losses in recent years due to competition from manufacturers in lower- and middle-income countries like India. Larger generic drugmakers had been consolidating, hoping the extra cash could allow further investment and stave off the other copycats. In 2018, India’s Aurobindo Pharma bought parts of Novartis’ generics unit for $1 billion, and in 2015, Teva swallowed Allergan’s generic business for $40.5 billion.
At the time, some analysts such as Cowen’s Ken Cacciatore did not believe the Mylan-Upjohn deal would solve anything. Though he had “long felt that standalone Mylan was absolutely broken,” the estimated revenue from Viatris came in under his own projections.
“This only adds conviction to our original thesis that this merger will solve nothing, and that the pressure and negative view of the combination will likely only increase into the eventual close,” he wrote.
Upjohn had been based in Shanghai to produce drugs for emerging markets, and once included knockoffs of blockbuster products such as Lipitor, Viagra and Lyrica.