Source: LOHAS Weekly Newsletter
Published: Tuesday, September 03, 2002

Dutch life science products company DSM will buy Roche's Vitamins and Fine Chemicals Division for $2.24 billion. Roche's vitamins division, which will become a unit of DSM, has annual sales of $2.4 billion and employs 7,500 people, according to a Sept. 3 Roche announcement.

Roche's division combined with DSM's biotechnologies efforts “will allow an acceleration of innovation, for instance in nutritional ingredients and functional foods,” states Peter Elverding, DSM's managing board chairman, in the announcement.

Roche says that present and future liabilities from a 2001 vitamin price-fixing case will remain with Roche. In November 2001, the European Union imposed $460 million of fines on Roche for antitrust violations. According to a Nov. 21 Guardian Unlimited article, Roche was found to be the price-fixing cartel's “main instigator.” Other companies involved were BASF, France's Aventis SA, The Netherlands' Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Germany's Merck, and Japan's Daiichi Pharmaceutical, Esai and Takeda Chemical Industries.