, Columnist
CD&R Faces Tough Road to 20% Returns With Sanofi
The US buyout firm is pairing with the French pharma giant to buy out its consumer unit. Success here requires much more than cutting costs.
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Clayton Dubilier & Rice LLC finally won the auction for the Opella consumer health-care business being separated from France’s Sanofi SA. Agreeing to a €16 billion ($17 billion) valuation in the face of a comparable offer from rival buyout firm PAI Partners was the easy bit.
Achieving decent returns will require real work as this isn’t a conventional corporate carve-out: Opella’s product range needs reconfiguring and the French government is firmly strapped into the passenger seat.