Stada CEO Hartmut Retzlaff has been elusive about what the future holds for the German generics maker, which has often popped up at the center of buyout rumors. But Stada's Markus Metzger acknowledged this week what any good investor relations executive would. If someone makes a significant offer, the board would give a good look.
Stada reportedly has been courted by any number of interested parties--Teva Pharmaceutical Industries ($TEVA), Pfizer ($PFE), Watson Pharmaceuticals ($WPI) and India's Sun Pharmaceutical Industries have each had their names linked with Stada. And each time, the rumors go, Stada has elicited no interest. But speaking to Bloomberg at this week's J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, Metzger gave a hint of what would move the dial on a deal.
"It's finally a matter of price," Metzger, Stada's director of investor relations told the news service. "If anybody puts a very high price on the table, the executive board will have to act in the best interest of shareholders."
More recently, the talk has been that Claudio Albrecht, the CEO of Actavis, might be interested in orchestrating a buyout once the sale of his own company to Watson is complete and he is out of a job. He supposedly is talking to Stada shareholders who became disenchanted when the company last summer gave Sun Pharma the cold shoulder.
What does Metzger think? Like any good director of investor relations, he declined to offer any insight. "It's not in our hands, we are 100 percent free float," he told Bloomberg.
- read the Bloomberg story