Novartis to spin off Alcon unit

June 29, 2018

Novartis has announced its intention to spinoff Alcon, its eye care division, into a separately-traded standalone company.

The drugmaker plans to use proceeds from the $13 billion sale of its stake in a consumer-health joint venture with GSK to repurchase as much as $5 billion in shares.

According to Novartis, the planned spinoff would enable Novartis and Alcon to focus fully on their respective growth strategies.

“This transaction would allow our shareholders to benefit from potential future successes of a more focused Novartis and a standalone Alcon, which would become a publicly traded global medtech leader based here in Switzerland,” said Joerg Reinhardt, Chairman of Novartis.

If the Alcon spinoff is completed, it would create a new Switzerland-based company with global scale and reach comprising more than 20,000 employees, with around $7B in 2017 sales.

Read the press release