PARIS — French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi said on Friday that it was in talks to sell a majority stake of its subsidiary that produces over-the-counter drugs to an American private equity firm CD&R for €15 billion.
The proposed takeover is already proving highly controversial in France, with politicians from across political spectrum voicing fears it could threaten manufacturing jobs in France and fall afoul of Europe’s push to secure its supply chains for critical medicines.
Mere hours after Sanofi announced that it was in talks to sell the subsidiary, Opella, as part of its push to focus on vaccines and innovative drugs, the French government warned that if CD&R did not keep the company’s management and production in France, it would consider using its investment screening and veto powers.
In the past, the French government has not hesitated to use those powers to block takeovers it viewed as dangerous, ranging from supermarkets to nuclear suppliers. A group of 62 centrist and conservative lawmakers sent Armand a letter on Friday calling upon the government to intervene.
“The French government will mobilize all the tools at its disposal, including those for controlling foreign investment in France,” Economy Minister Antoine Armand and junior Industry Minister Marc Ferracci said in a statement.
The ministers, however, said that the buyer was “serious.” They promised that any deal would not have an impact on the production and the supply of paracetamol and other essential medicines in France.
Despite those assurances, French lawmakers were quick to slam the possibility of a corporate takeover that would see the country’s omnipresent yellow boxes of Doliprane, the brand name of Sanofi’s paracetamol, in American hands — especially given the hundreds of millions of euros the company has received in state aid. French President Emmanuel Macron last month inaugurated a new Sanofi vaccine factory which he said benefitted from €240 million of French state aid.
The head of the far-right National Rally, Jordan Bardella, said it would be “incomprehensible for the state to let this happen.” Left-wing lawmaker Eric Coquerel, who chairs the National Assembly finance committee, said that “it is unthinkable to give up our sovereignty over the production of this type of medicine” and stressed that Sanofi was “flush with public money.”
Lawmakers from Macron’s centrist camp also castigated the possible deal.
France has in recent years provided generous subsidies to drugmakers in a bid reshore domestic medicine production, especially paracetamol, after critical shortages emerged during the coronavirus pandemic due to a global reliance on overseas suppliers. In parallel, the European Commission is working on a Critical Medicines Act to reduce Europe’s reliance on other countries for drugs.
