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Roche goes hostile

Roche is betting big on gene sequence testing company Illumina, in a determined grab for market share in a potentially lucrative niche.
January 26, 2012

Apparently fed up with an unresponsive board, Swiss pharma giant Roche has gone hostile with a $5.7bn (£3.6bn) bid for gene sequence testing company Illumina, in a determined grab for market share in a potentially lucrative niche.

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The main attraction for Roche is how Illumina would fit into its own diagnostic testing business, which is focused on finding sub-groups of patients who might respond better to one of its existing treatments. The race is on to make a device that can take gene sequencing out of specialist labs and straight into hospitals and doctors' surgeries. Not only would this vastly expand the current $1.5bn market, but it should increase pharmaceutical product sales at the same time as new sub-groups are identified.