Ready for an M&A fight? Af­ter GSK shunned $68B of­fer, Unilever says it's still in hunt for con­sumer health JV

So how much is the con­sumer health­care busi­ness joint­ly owned by Glax­o­SmithK­line and Pfiz­er worth?

The an­swer is more than $68 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to GSK, which re­vealed over the week­end that it re­ceived, and prompt­ly re­ject­ed, three un­so­licit­ed pro­pos­als from con­sumer goods con­glom­er­ate Unilever to buy out the unit.

But what­ev­er it costs, Unilever ap­pears de­ter­mined to com­plete the deal.

“We be­lieve that this would be an at­trac­tive and syn­er­gis­tic com­bi­na­tion for the share­hold­ers of Unilever, which would al­so de­liv­er val­ue and cer­tain­ty for the share­hold­ers of GSK and Pfiz­er,” the com­pa­ny wrote in a Mon­day state­ment, adding that the buy­out would be a “strong strate­gic fit” giv­en that 45% of GSK con­sumer health­care is in ar­eas where Unilever is al­ready ac­tive while oth­ers would bring it in­to at­trac­tive ad­ja­cent ter­ri­to­ries.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER