Billionaire Bastas buys out pharma partners in $1b deal; UBS on hand
Billionaire businessman Dennis Bastas is closing in on full control of the two pharmaceuticals groups he jointly owns with Canada’s wealthy Sherman family, in what’s understood to be a $1 billion deal.
KKR Credit and Goldman Sachs have co-invested with Bastas and provided the majority of funds. The transaction, which is slated to close later this month, included a debt refinance and allows Bastas to oversee Arrotex and Juno Pharmaceuticals under a newly created vehicle, dubbed DBG Health, which he wholly owns.
Dennis Bastas’ wealth has increased more than 33 per cent this year. Nicole Reed
Arrotex, the country’s largest generic drug supplier, was created from a merger of Bastas’ Arrow Pharmaceuticals and the Sherman’s Apotex Australia in July 2019. Bastas, however, has kept operational control. Bastas had flagged earlier this year a plan to buy the Shermans out of Arrotex and Juno Pharmaceuticals, which supplies hospitals with drugs used in oncology and surgery.
The Financial Review Rich List puts Bastas’ wealth at $1.32 billion, up more than 33 per cent in the past 12 months. The businessman, the son of Greek immigrant parents who came to Australia in the early 1960s and settled in Melbourne, was assisted by UBS for the transaction, sources said.
The most recent financial accounts lodged by Arrotex Pharmaceuticals, for the 12 months to the end of March 2022, showed the company posting $69.6 million in profit, up from $38 million one year earlier. Revenues ballooned from $879.6 million to more than $1.18 billion, they showed.
The company, for instance, is a major player in the fragmented pain-management sector, commanding 4 per cent of the market, largely through the ownership of the Chemists’ Own brand. Overall, it has
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