PARIS — The French drug-maker Sanofi-Aventis said Wednesday that it had agreed to buy Genzyme for at least $20.1 billion in cash, with additional payments possible based on the performance of the U.S. biotechnology company’s drugs.
The acquisition is one of the largest ever by a French company and the second-largest deal in biotechnology after Roche’s purchase of Genentech in 2008, according to Thomson Reuters data. But the size did not faze Sanofi’s chief executive, Christopher Viehbacher.
“I’m not a scientist, I’m a CPA, and I don’t spend $20 billion unless I see the value in that,” he said on a conference call with reporters. “We don’t have financing difficulties,” he added. “We have difficulty finding the right ideas to finance.”
The deal ends months of haggling after Sanofi unsuccessfully sought to acquire Genzyme for $18.5 billion and Genzyme’s board resisted. Viehbacher said the deal took so long to complete because while the two companies agreed on 90 percent of Genzyme’s value, “10 percent of $20 billion is a lot of money.”
Under the terms of the deal, Sanofi is paying an initial $74 a share for Genzyme, and shareholders could receive up to an additional $14 a share if certain drugs meet specific performance targets.