Boehringer Ingelheim's 2005 profit up 67%: happy independent despite German taxes

At its annual press conference, Germany's biggest drugmaker, Boehringer Ingelheim, maintainted that it would not acquire medium-sized local companies such as Altana and Merck KGaA, which are seeking partners. The firm's chief executive, Alessandro Banchi, said that BI's strategy was growth through its development pipeline.

Dr Banchi maintained that the Ingelheim-headquartered company, which will be Germany's second-laregst pharmaceutical group after the completion of Bayer and Schering AG's proposed $19.9 billion merger (Marketletters passim), would only consider licensing deals. "We are very interested in acquiring products. That means we don't want to acquire sales but research projects," he said.

He noted that, as a privately-held firm, BI is free to pursue the long-term strategy, which helped it achieve net sales of 9.53 billion euros ($11.68 billion) in 2005, up 16.9% on the previous year, outstripping the pharmaceutical market average of 6% and making it the fastest-growing company in the sector.