Victor Grifols, chairman and chief executive officer of life science giant Grifols, remains confident that his term’s $3.8 billion takeover of RTP-based Talecris (Nasdaq: TLCR) will be approved.
“I have in my bag $4 billion sitting and waiting to be invested,” Grifols told Bloomberg news at an event in Madrid on Wednesday. “I don’t know when we’ll receive the green light from the FTC. I’m sure we’ll get it, but it’s a very long process. As soon as we get approval we are going to invest it.”
The Federal Trade Commission has yet to rule on the deal. Grifols hopes to wrap up the merger by June 30. The FTC helped scuttle another Talecris merger by expressing concerns about a consolidation of firms in the blood-based therapeutics space would lessen competition.
According to Reuters, commission staff at the FTC concluded in February that the deal would hurt competition.
“We are not going to damage competition,” Grifols told Bloomberg. “This has been our philosophy.”
Grifols, a Spanish holding company specializing in the pharmaceutical-hospital sector in more than 90 countries, launched its $4 billion bid for Talecris in June 2010. If the deal is approved, Grifols would become the world’s third largest maker of blood plasma products, competing with rivals such as Baxter International and Australia’s CSL, which failed in its bid to buy Talecris.
Talecris makes drugs from blood plasma such as Gamunex and Prolastin to treat auto-immune diseases and other ailments. The company also owns plasma-collection centers.
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