The private equity owners of Stada are close to mandating investment banks to sell the German generic drugmaker or list it on the stock exchange, newspaper Handelsblatt reported on Wednesday, citing financial sources.

The company, majority-owned (since 2017) by buyout firms Bain and Cinven, who you can meet at the UK Private Equity Conference,  sells consumer healthcare products such as painkillers and sunscreen lotions, as well as biosimilar and generic drugs, which are cheaper copies of established pharmaceuticals that have lost patent protection.

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Stada declined to comment. A spokesperson for Cinven could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Handelsblatt report said the most likely option for now was the sale of a minority stake in Stada to a third investor, and said Stada could be valued at up to 15bn euros ($16.10 bn) in a transaction.

Source: Yahoo! Finance

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