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Roche finalizes repurchase of shares from Novartis

By Brian Buntz | December 6, 2021

Roche/Novartis Roche (SIX:RO,ROG) has announced that it has completed the repurchase of 53.3 million shares held by Novartis (NYSE:NVS) for a total consideration of $20.7 billion.

In early November, the companies had announced that they had agreed to a bilateral transaction related to the sale of the shares.

Roche intends on canceling the repurchased shares after the transaction is complete.

“With this transaction, we regain full strategic flexibility without compromising our operational scope of action,” said Christoph Franz, Roche chairman of the board of directors.

Roche had previously stated that the transaction would not affect its communicated outlook for 2021.

In related news, Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said the company plans on developing an oral therapy that would target an array of coronaviruses.

About The Author

Brian Buntz

The pharma and biotech editor of WTWH Media, Brian is a veteran journalist with more than 15 years of experience covering an array of life science topics, including clinical trials, drug discovery and development and medical devices. Before coming to WTWH, he served as content director focused on connected devices at Informa. In addition, Brian covered the medical device sector for 10 years at UBM. At Qmed, he overhauled the brand’s news coverage and helped to grow the site’s traffic volume dramatically. He had previously held managing editor roles on two of the company’s medical device technology publications. Connect with him on LinkedIn or email at bbuntz@wtwhmedia.com.