Teva triumphs in battle for Ratiopharm, with a whopping 3.6 billion-euro offer seeing off Pfizer and Actavis

After many months of speculation and behind the scenes activity, Germany's second largest generics drugmaker Ratiopharm (after Hexal, a part of Swiss drug major Novartis' generics unit Sandoz), has been secured by already the world's biggest copy drug company Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (The Pharma Letters passim).

In the bidding war that has been raging - most recently just with global pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer and Iceland's Actavis, Teva has acquired control of Ratiopharm with a 3.6 billion-euro ($4.95 billion) offer for the firm, which represents a multiple of about 11.8 times Ratiopharm's 2009 earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. Teva's most recent big buy was that of Barr Pharmaceutical in the USA, for $7.46 billion in 2008. .

Ratiopharm came up for auction following the suicide of its principal Adolf Merckle - who had accumulated massive debts estimated at $6.8 billion - in January 2009. Neither Pfizer, which was reportedly ready to offer 3 billion euros for the German firm, nor Actavis, have so far made any comment on losing out for control of the company.