Pfizer in News

Israel's Teva to pay $85 million for Pfizer's Italian Arm
The Economic Times : August 19, 2004

Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries has agreed to buy Pfizer's Italian generic drug marketing company and is hungry for more acquisitions, the drugmaker said on Tuesday.

Teva, the world's largest generic drugmaker, agreed to buy Dorom for about 70m euros ($85m), a transaction that the company said would make it the largest generic drugmaker in a growing Italian market.

"We are restless," Dan Suesskind, Teva's chief financial officer said. We are always looking for acquisitions. We are looking at everything to see if it makes sense - especially in Europe and North America. There are no opportunities that come to market we don't look at," he said. Meanwhile Aventis, a part of French drugs group Sanofi-Synthelabo, said it had initiated patent infringement litigation against Teva after the latter applied to market a generic version of Aventis' osteoporosis drug Actonel in the United States.

"This is a routine thing," Suesskind said. "Whenever we file a challenge to a patent, we get sued by the patent holder."

Teva's Tel Aviv-listed shares were up 3.28% at 125.90 shekels in early afternoon trade, outpacing gains of 0.76% on the broader exchange. Its turnover of 65m shekels was close to one-quarter of the volume on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.