Sanofi-Aventis on acquisition trail: speculatin on bid for troubled B-MS

There is intense speculation that Paris, France-headquartered Sanofi-Aventis, the world's third-largest pharmaceutical company by sales, which has made a bid of 3.0 billion euros ($3.78 billion) for the US biotechnology group ImClone, may be considering a takeover of its US marketing partner Bristol-Myers Squibb.

ImClone confirmed that it had received a bid offer last week, but has not disclosed the identity of the company making it, and the acceptance of the deal is conditional on the agreement of a private shareholder, billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who has a 14% stake in the company and who is in a state of open war with the current management of the US firm (see also page 6).

Sanofi-Aventis and ImClone already have links dating back to the period of Rhone-Poulenc (which combined with Germany's Hoechst to form the Aventis part of the new group), one of which is via B-MS. The latter is the French drugmaker's industrial partner in the commercialization of the antithrombosis drug Plavix (clopidogrel) and is also the leading shareholder in ImClone.