Consumer goods group Unilever is facing resistance from pharmaceutical giant Glaxosmithkline with a billion-dollar bid for its consumer goods division. Glaxosmithkline said on Saturday that the offer, worth around £50 billion or the equivalent of EUR 60 billion, would fundamentally undervalue the division and its prospects. The preparations for the IPO planned for the middle of the year would continue. Unilever confirmed the offer and left open the question of a possible increase. A transaction of this magnitude would be the largest worldwide since the beginning of the corona pandemic.
The US pharmaceutical group Pfizer has held a 32 percent stake in the consumer goods division of the British company GlaxoSmithKline since the two companies merged their respective businesses in 2019. A report of Sunday Times According to Pfizer, the offer from the British-Dutch Unilever was also rejected as too low. With brands such as Sensodyne toothpaste, the painkiller Voltaren and Otriven nasal spray, the division recently earned £10 billion and thus contributed almost a third of GlaxoSmithkline’s £34 billion annual turnover.
According to GlaxoSmithKline, it received three offers from Unilever, the last one in December.