Serono asks for interested bidders to submit offers

Reports have emerged that Switzerland’s Serono has asked potential suitors for the firm to submit binding bids early in the new year.

Reuters reports that advisers to Serono, Goldman Sachs, indicated that it wants to receive bids for the biotech company within two months.

However, Serono refused to comment on the story.

Serono, the world’s third-largest biotech group by sales and currently valued at $11 billion, hired Goldman Sachs in November to look at “strategic alternatives” for the company.

It is thought that the company could be sold for as much as $15 billion and Novartis, Roche, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer have all submitted indications of interest in order to get access to the company’s books.

Serono is 62-per cent owned by the founding Bertarelli family. Its main area of sales is in multiple sclerosis and fertility treatments with the multiple sclerosis drug Rebif accounting for around half of its revenues.

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