Sweden's Astra Buys Most Of Fisons R&D Ops

For a consideration of some 2.30 billion Swedish kroner ($315.6 million), drugmaker Astra is to acquire nearly all of the pharmaceutical research activities of troubled UK company Fisons. The deal will be financed through Astra's liquid funds with Fisons retaining royalty rights to non-CFC aerosol products and certain development projects. The acquired research activities will raise Astra's annual R&D spending by around 600 million kroner. Astra's R&D spending in 1994 was 3.93 billion kroner.

The deal is slightly dilutive, with a short-term net effect of around -0.70 kroner per share, but will provide long-term growth opportunities, said Hakan Mogren, president and chief executive of Astra at an impromptu press conference in London on March 17. The activities that Astra is to acquire are: - Fisons' UK pharmaceutical research and development facilities at Loughborough which focuses on respiratory compounds; - the research part of Fisons' Rochester operations in the USA which focuses on the central nervous system; - 900 people on the two sites, excluding 200 who will be retained by Fisons in the respiratory area; - a portfolio of R&D projects in early stages of development; and - access to leading non-CFC aerosol technology.

Astra gains the state-of-the-art R&D facilities at Fisons Loughborough site, and it also gains ongoing building projects that Fisons started in the UK, and is committed to completing them.