Paul Schloesser
Associate Editor

Sandoz, a generics maker that Novartis plans to spin off later this year, has picked its new headquarters — and it’s only 2.4 miles away from its current digs on the Novartis campus.

The Novartis unit said Thursday that it plans to move to an office building in Basel called Elsässertor sometime in mid-2024.

Sandoz CEO Richard Saynor said in a news release that the location in the heart of Basel “will allow us to create a working environment that meets our business needs,” citing the talent pool in the Swiss city. Sandoz added that the workspace is designed to allow for “closer collaboration and teamwork.”

Sandoz did not immediately respond to queries from Endpoints News.

Novartis announced back in August that it planned to spin out Sandoz as its own independent company, which is set to be listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange. Amid concerns of financial underperformance for the generics giant in recent years, Novartis in 2021 decided to conduct a strategic review of the generics unit. That included a possibility of a sale of Sandoz.

Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan has said he wants Novartis to focus on new medicines, saying that 80% of sales and up to 90% of profits come from new medicines.

After wrestling with the Sandoz problem for several years, Vas Narasimhan settles on a spinout
Reuters reported in 2021 that the private equity firm EQT and the billionaire Strüngmann brothers jointly expressed interest in buying the generics unit, though no offers were made. It was later reported by Bloomberg and the Financial Times that Blackstone and Carlyle had talked about making a $25 billion offer for Sandoz. That deal never panned out.

Reference: https://endpts.com/