The Minister Delegate in charge of Industry, Roland Lescure explained Thursday that the State is “following and being very vigilant” on a possible sale of Biogaran, a generic laboratory and subsidiary of the Servier group, which holds a third of the French market.
“If a foreign investor wishes to buy Biogaran, we leave ourselves the possibility of activating the so-called IEF procedure (foreign investment in France, Editor’s note)”, specified the minister to the press during a trip to Sarthe, to inaugurate a single-use glove factory in Bessé-sur-Braye.
This procedure makes it possible to “control investments made by foreign companies in France in strategic sectors”. While rumors of the sale of Biogaran, a major player in generics in France, are growing, Roland Lescure affirmed the State’s desire to determine “the necessary and proportionate conditions in order to ensure our health sovereignty”.
An economic model running out of steam
The newspaper Les Echos, confirming information given in December by the magazine L’Informé, assured Wednesday that the sale has been initiated by Servier from 2023, and that among the four candidates in the running for the takeover of Biogaran are two Indian generic manufacturers . At the beginning of April, the Servier group announced that it “does not comment on rumors”.
In a context of growing shortages of medicines, manufacturers of generic medicines, essential but unprofitable products, are suffering from an economic model that is running out of steam, with the prices set by the French health authorities being, according to them, among the lowest in the world. ‘Europe.