Sanofi Aventis's little acorns

Chris Viehbacher is stepping on the gas. In his first year in charge of Sanofi Aventis, he made one acquisition a month. In June, the eighth largest pharmaceutical company in the world has completed one transaction a week.

Of course, these are modest acquisitions. But there is major potential. Two weeks ago, Sanofi Aventis bought the Canadian dermatology specialist Canderm, which has annual revenue of 19 million euros. Last week, it took a stake in the capital of the American company Regulus, which specialises in the treatment of fibrosis, with an initial investment of 20 million euros. But the agreement provided for the French company to finance research and development costs, clinical trials and marketing, which could increase its commitment to 610 million euros.

The agreement concluded today with the American company TargeGen is of the same order. The company, whose new chairman is Serge Weinberg, will initially invest 60 million euros to buy the American biopharmaceutical company. But providing support for the development of its flagship specialised product for the treatment of leukaemia and blood disorders represents a total investment of 460 million euros.

Faced with competition from generics which are increasingly hitting its leading products such as Plavix and Eloxatine, which account for several billion euros of annual sales, Sanofi Aventis has therefore found a new remedy to mitigate the modest size of its own new products pipeline, which was worrying investors. By acquiring promising small companies for modest sums and providing them with substantial financial resources that they do not possess to develop their own molecules, the French company is killing two birds with one stone.

While its share price has gone down by 11% since the beginning of the year, underperforming the European pharmaceutical sector index by 12%, Sanofi Aventis is therefore in a good position to recover and to embark upon the costly acquisitions that are no longer to the markets' taste.