While Sanofi announced this Friday that it was negotiating the sale of its subsidiary Opella, responsible for manufacturing Doliprane, with the CD&R investment fund, parliamentarians from all sides asked the government to block the sale.
This Friday, October 11, parliamentarians urged the government to block the sale of Opella, a subsidiary of the Sanofi laboratory and responsible for the manufacture of Doliprane, in the name of French health sovereignty. Earlier today, Sanofi announced that it had started “exclusive discussions” with the American investment fund CD&R for the sale of around a hundred brands from its subsidiary Opella.
Faced with the risk of a sale of Doliprane, the best-selling drug in France, party leaders reacted in turn on social networks. Like Marine Tondelier (Les Écologues) for whom, “no lessons will have been learned from Covid” or even Fabien Roussel (Communist Party) who speaks of “shame” and “symbol of our loss of sovereignty”.
On the side of the presidential relative majority, The World which cites the AFP, reveals that around sixty Macronist deputies, Horizons and Republican Right declared in a joint letter to the Minister of the Economy, Antoine Armand, “Doliprane is an essential medicine for the health of millions of French people”A “success for the Sanofi group”and the operation would go against the “restoration of French sovereignty in health matters.”
The drug that was worth 16 billion
According to the source, Opella would be valued at nearly 16 billion euros. The Sanofi subsidiary currently represents the world number three in non-prescription medicines, as well as vitamins and other food supplements.
For the moment, nothing has been signed. The government announced this Friday to take note of Sanofi’s decision. The Ministers of the Economy, Antoine Armand, and of Industry, Marc Ferracci, have also requested commitments from the laboratory and the future buyer to guarantee the “maintaining the headquarters and decision-making centers on the national territory” And “Opella’s French industrial footprint.”
The World adds that parliamentarians have asked the Barnier government “to invoke an article of the monetary and financial code”. This system makes it possible to subject foreign investments in sensitive sectors, such as health, to prior authorization.
published on October 11 at 10:22 p.m., Allan Doisneau, 6Medias