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Pliva: Europe is Not Enough

 
• By Sabine Louet

Buying Sobel Holdings makes Croatia's Pliva one of the first eastern European companies to buy into the US market. It's doing so cleverly, leveraging future revenues from its biggest product, azithromycin, to fund the deal, and executing it through a tax-efficient Hungarian subsidiary.

Having built up its presence across western Europe through a string of acquisitions over the last two years, Croatian drugs group Pliva DD —whose $635 million (€639 million) revenue comes mostly from generics—has made its first foray into the US. Pliva's acquisition of New Jersey-based Sobel Holdings Inc., a subsidiary of Sobel NV , for $212 million makes it one of the first eastern European companies to buy into the world's largest market [See Deal]. Pliva—which was privatized in 1993—had been wooing this target for over a year and reportedly beat Indian generics companies Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. and Wockhardt Ltd. to the deal.

Sobel Holdings owns Pliva Inc., a branded and generics drugs manufacturer and distributor with 40 generic products on the...

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