Sandoz Foundation to sell CHF2.6 billion in Novartis shares

Sandoz Family Foundation wants to sell Novartis shares Keystone-SDA

The Sandoz Family Foundation, the second-largest shareholder in Swiss pharma giant Novartis, has announced it is selling a substantial portion of its shares in the pharmaceutical giant. A foundation spokesperson confirmed the media reports on Tuesday evening.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

The spokesperson told the Swiss financial news agency AWP that the move is part of a diversification strategy but didn’t provide further details. According to Novartis’ annual report, the Sandoz Family Foundation recently held a 4.1% stake in the pharmaceutical company.

According to the news agency Reuters, the foundation is now offering a total of 26.5 million Novartis shares for sale through its holding company, Emasan AG, in an accelerated bookbuilding transaction. This represents about 1.2% of all outstanding Novartis shares.

+Corporate efforts to expand access to medicine stumble

According to Reuters, the company aims to sell the shares at CHF98.25 ($109.92) each, valuing the total at over CHF2.6 billion. The foundation’s spokesperson declined to comment. On Tuesday evening, Novartis shares closed at CHF100.72.

The Sandoz Family Foundation is a Novartis shareholder due to its historical ties with the company. The foundation traces its roots to the Sandoz family, who founded the Sandoz chemical company in Basel in 1866. Since the merger of Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz to form Novartis in 1996, the foundation has been one of the group’s key shareholders.

¨+After spin-off Sandoz sets out to make cheap medicine profitable

The foundation is active in several areas, especially in Switzerland. It focuses on education, vocational training, higher education and research. Additionally, it supports artists and museums through the Fondation Edouard et Maurice Sandoz (FEMS).

Translated from German with DeepL/sp

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].