Merckle’s Phoenix Said to Weigh Initial Public Offering, Sale

By Aaron Kirchfeld and Ambereen Choudhury

Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Phoenix Group, the German drug wholesaler started by the late billionaire Adolf Merckle, is considering an initial public offering as well as a sale, two people familiar with the plans said.

Deutsche Bank AG, which is overseeing the sale, is weighing a dual-track process, where a bank simultaneously prepares a company for an IPO and lines up potential bidders, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private. Phoenix, based in Mannheim, Germany, may be valued at about 5.5 billion euros to 6 billion euros ($8.5 billion), and an IPO would take place next year at the earliest, the people said.

“It makes sense to test both options -- a sale and IPO -- to see which one fetches the most money,” said Ulrich Huwald, an analyst at M.M. Warburg in Hamburg. “There’ll probably be a number of interested strategic and private equity buyers.”

The MSCI World Index’s 51 percent gain from its 15-year low in March is making share sales more attractive for companies after a two-year lull. Ludwig Merckle is selling drug, machinery and cement assets after his father Adolf, who committed suicide in January, amassed debt and lost money on wrong-way bets on the stock market last year.

A final decision on a sale or IPO hasn’t been made so far, the people said. Vivien Kremer, a spokeswoman for the Merckles’ holding company, declined to comment, as did Deutsche Bank spokesman Armin Niedermeier.

Mepha Group

The Merckle family is also preparing to sell Mepha Group, a Swiss generic-drug maker, in an auction that could raise about 500 million Swiss francs ($464 million), people familiar with the situation said yesterday.

Phoenix operates in 23 countries and supplies about 43,000 European pharmacies with medicines. The company had sales of 21.6 billion euros in the year ended Jan. 31, 2008, about 30 percent of which were in Germany, according to its latest annual report. The Merckle family also controls generic-drug maker Ratiopharm, which is also being sold.

Alliance Boots Holdings Ltd., the U.K. drugstore chain controlled by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., is considering a bid for Phoenix, four people familiar with the plan said in March. Nottingham, England-based Boots has made no final decision, the people said at the time.

To contact the reporters on this story: Aaron Kirchfeld in Frankfurt at akirchfeld@bloomberg.net; Ambereen Choudhury in London at achoudhury@bloomberg.net