China's largest CRO, WuXi PharmaTech, now privately held

Print 16 December 2015
EJ Lane / FeircePharmaAsia

Shanghai-based WuXi PharmaTech ($WX) has left the New York Stock Exchange in a management-led buyout worth $3.3 billion after a nearly 10-year run with a flurry of deals late this year pointing to the breadth of its ambitions in drug development.

Shareholders of American Depositary Shares received $46.00 each for the equivalent of 8 shares valued at $5.75 each, according to a press release.

The buyout team included Ge Li, chairman and CEO, along with other top executives and Ally Bridge Group, Boyu Capital, Ping An Insurance Group of China, Singapore's Temasek Holdings and Hillhouse Capital.

The proposal announced in April was widely seen as a move by management to open up more paths to dealmaking for China's largest CRO that may not reach the public as quickly. In the past few months, there have been a spate of collaborations announced that included Eli Lilly ($LLY) on a cardio candidate and wider work with Gilead Sciences ($GILD) on clinical and regulatory efforts as well as an ambitious set of plans for genomics unit WuXi NextCODE.

Ahead the company could move fairly quickly back to the capital markets, but possibly in Hong Kong or the mainland. An example would be China-focused 3SBio which moved to delist from the U.S. Nasdaq exchange and go private in 2013.

But in June of this year, 3SBio raised $710 million in an initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

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