Doliprane: the conditions of the buyback imposed by the government

Sanofi has announced that it has begun “exclusive negotiations” with the American group CR&D for the sale of Opella, which markets Doliprane. However, the French government, which has become a shareholder, will ensure that several commitments are respected.

Doliprane will indeed come under the American flag, but not without supervision by the French government. The Sanofi group has announced This Monday, October 21, begin "exclusive negotiations" with the American investment fund CD&R " for the transfer of a 50% controlling interest" of its subsidiary Opella, which produces and markets around a hundred drugs, including Doliprane.

But a third party has been added to the agreement concluded between Sanofi and CD&R: the French State. The sale of Opella, which is the third largest company in the world in the non-prescription drugs sector and which is above all the owner of the famous yellow box drug, has made France tremble. And for good reason, the French who consume 400 million boxes of Doliprane each year feared seeing the drug disappear from pharmacies or be sold at higher prices. From an economic point of view, the Opella company represents 1,700 employees in France out of the 11,000 people hired throughout the world and two of the thirteen production sites that manufacture paracetamol, the active ingredient in Doliprane. Achievements that the French State wished to protect and for which it became a shareholder of the group as announced by the Minister of the Economy, Antoine Armand, on the evening of Sunday, October 20.

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According to the agreement reached between the three parties, the American group CD&R should obtain 50% of the Opella company while the pharmaceutical giant Sanofi retains 48% of the group and the French State “[must] participate as a minority shareholder at around 2%” via the public investment bank Bpifrance. The State will also have a seat on the board of directors of Opella, so that “BPI will be able to ensure from the inside that the commitments made, which are accompanied by heavy financial penalties, are properly followed. This is the mission of this participation,” Bercy specified.

The Doliprane sold against several guarantees

The Ministry of Economy has indeed set conditions for the sale of Opella, and therefore of Doliprane, among other things. But the minister's entourage assured Sunday evening, according to Les Echos, that “the whole week was devoted to negotiating these commitments” and that “we managed to obtain guarantees that matched what was requested, we even managed to improve them”. Among these commitments, the first and most important concerns the maintenance of Opella's governance in France as well as the maintenance of jobs and industrial activities already existing in France.

The American investment fund that is preparing to become the owner of Doliprane has also been forced to give other guarantees: the commitment to continue supplying the French market with four drug molecules produced by Opella (paracetamol, aspirin and two gastric protectors, lansoprazole and pantoprazole); but also the commitment to ensure and secure the supply of the French market with drugs produced elsewhere than in France. The last guarantee required of the CD&R group is to grow the Opella group with investments for internal growth or acquisition in order to develop the Sanofi subsidiary.

The financial resources of the investment fund largely explain the sale of the Doliprane manufacturing company. But if the request expressed by the French State certainly aims at the evolution of the group, it must above all serve to avoid a restructuring and a total resale of Opella, an outcome feared by the employees and the unions of the group.