Chinese companies are buying global health assets.

Chinese companies are buying global health assets.


Published on July 29, 2016



This year Chinese firms announced more than $3.9 billion in overseas acquisitions in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and health-care sectors, a pace that will definitely exceed last year’s record total and increase ten times the amount spent in the entire 2012.

According to the Bloomberg-compiled data, for example, this year there has been the largest international pharma acquisition by a Chinese company ever: in May, China’s Creat Group Corp. agreed to acquire Bio Products Laboratory Ltd, an English maker of human blood plasma products for $1.2 billion. Another big operation was the one for which Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co., supported by Guo Guangchang, made, last May, a non-binding offer to buy 96 percent of India’s Gland Pharma Ltd., a company whose core business is injectable drugs. The trend of this “healthy” M&A is driven by Chinese enterprises seeking to diversify their portfolios, in the face of slowing growth at home and because the government pushes to upgrade the "Made in China" brand.  Success overseas acquisitions will allow them to find new areas of growth and provide a ready-made entry into developed markets that have high regulatory standards.

The Chinese industry and its investments overseas are both definitely healthy!