London-based Andrew Jack, lead pharmaceuticals reporter for The Financial Times, reported late Sunday night (2/1) that Sanofli-Aventis is planning to make acquisitions in a bid to enlarge and diversify its businesses.
Other news organizations, including Dow Jones Newswires, The Wall Street Journal's Health Blog, and Bloomberg News were forced to play catch up.
Jack cited comments made by Chris Viehbacher, Sanofi-Aventis's CEO, at a company staff meeting held on Friday, January 30th. Jack wrote that Viebacher "is keen to make his mark with a similar but still bolder version of the strategy adopted by Andrew Witty, who beat him to the top job at [GlaxoSmithKline] in late 2007."
Bloomberg News's Albertina Torsoli, based in Paris, confirmed and expanded upon the crux of Viehbacher's remarks with Thierry Bodin, a member of the pharmaceutical company's union. Torsoli also quoted "two people familiar with the talks" in noting that Sanofi is seeking a new finance chief and has interviewed Jerome Contamine, the former finance head of Veolia Environment SA.
Elena Berton of Dow Jones Newswire could only get Sanofi-Aventis to confirm that Viehbacher had spoken to employees at the end of last week, but not that the French drug maker is planning acquisitions.
Bloomberg and Health Blog credited the FT's Jack with naming likely targets for Sanofi, including Bristol-Myers Squibb, Amgen, and Biogen Idec.
Jean-Marc Podvin, a Sanofi spokesman, was cited by Bloomberg.
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