Another subsidiary of Unilever to purchase GSK Bangladesh’s stake
Unilever Overseas Holdings is set to buy 82 per cent stakes in GlaxoSmithKline's health food and drinks business in Bangladesh instead of Unilever Nv as previously announced in 2018.
The 98.75 lakh shares would be purchased from Setfirst.
Generally, no multinational company buys another company directly. They do so on the name of their subsidiary or parent company.
"Unilever, too, is doing the same here," said Masud Khan, chairman of GSK Bangladesh.
Khan hopes the share transfer will be completed soon.
Unilever is purchasing GSK's entire health food and drinks portfolio in India as well as in 20 other Asian countries for €3.3 billion (about $3.74 billion) too, after it fought off competition from rivals Nestle and Coca-Cola as part of its push to cash in on Asia's fast-growing economies.
The remaining 18 per cent shares of GSK Bangladesh are held by general investors and institutional investors.
Setfirst is getting Tk 1,660 for each share though GSK Bangladesh's shares are now trading at Tk 2,046 on the Dhaka bourse.
When the primary agreement was done in 2018, GSK's stock was trading at Tk 1,084.
GlaxoSmithKline is a science-led global healthcare company with a broad range of innovative medicines, vaccines and consumer healthcare products.
The heritage of GSK Bangladesh goes back to almost seven decades and following a number of mergers and acquisitions, GSK Bangladesh Limited, a subsidiary of GSK plc, started its journey in 2002.
GSK Bangladesh's products include nutrition and oral healthcare products, led by brands like Horlicks and Sensodyne.
The consumer healthcare business has delivered a compound annual growth rate of 6.8 per cent in the last two years.
However, the British multinational shuttered its 60-year-old pharmaceuticals business in Bangladesh in 2018. The pharmaceuticals unit, based in Chattogram, was incurring losses in the previous five years, much to the concern of the GSK Bangladesh board.
With the view to preventing any more losses, the board decided to bring down the curtains on the business.
But GSK continued to outperform competition in both its key categories of health food drinks and toothpaste, with GSK share increasing to 95.8 per cent in the health food drink category, a gain of 0.3 per cent over 2017.
Despite the business growth, GSK's decision to sell comes to support its parent company's $13 billion acquisition of Novartis's consumer healthcare joint venture.
The buyout gave GSK full control of products, including Sensodyne toothpaste, Panadol headache tablets, muscle gel Voltaren and Nicotinell patches.
GSK Bangladesh management assures that the deal to transfer its ownership from Setfirst to Unilever Overseas Holdings Bv will not impact on the "Going Concern" status of the company.
Comments