Leading Indian private equity fund ICICI Venture is exiting Ranbaxy Fine Chemicals, a company it bought five years ago and renamed RFCL. ICICI Venture has sold around 90 per cent of its holding to US chemicals company Avantor Performance Materials Holdings in a deal worth Rs 450-500 crore. ICICI Venture had bought RFCL for only Rs 100 crore.
Avantor, previously known as Mallinckrodt Baker, was acquired in August by an affiliate of New Mountain Capital, a private equity fund. Investment bank N M Rothchild, which was advisor to an earlier transaction with Pfizer, was also advisor to this deal, according to sources. In a similar deal last year, RFCL’s animal healthcare vertical, Vetnex, was sold to Pfizer for $75 million (around Rs 334 crore).
When contacted, however, an ICICI Venture spokesperson declined to comment.
ICICI Venture acquired Ranbaxy Fine Chemicals in December 2005 through a leveraged buyout from Ranbaxy Laboratories at an enterprise value of $25 million. In 2006, it was renamed RFCL with three divisions: Vetnex, Diagnova (diagnostics) and Rankem (fine chemicals).
| FAST BUCK |
| * ICICI Ven buys Ranbaxy arm for Rs 100 crore in 2005 |
| * Renames company RFCL, demerges animal health biz |
| * Sells business to Pfizer for Rs 334 crore in Dec 2009 |
| * Sells the remaining part for Rs 500 crore to Avantor |
Fine chemicals have highly specialised applications and are commonly used in pharmaceuticals, inks, performance-enhancing additives, special coatings and photographic materials. RFCL is also the domestic market leader in analytical lab chemicals and reagents.
It is among the top five players in in-vitro diagnostics products (testing kits required to detect diseases). RFCL has manufacturing facilities for diagnostics products at Dehradun and for lab chemicals and reagents at Panoli in Gujarat.
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ICICI Venture has invested in various life sciences companies like Arch Pharmalabs, Malladi Drugs, Bharat Biotech, I-Ven Pharma, RFCL, Metropolis, Avesthagen, Biocon, Medicorp, Intas Pharma, Sun Pharma and Swiss Biosciences.