Allergan Inc. (AGN), the maker of the Botox wrinkle treatment, has attracted interest for its weight- loss unit and wants to sell the business by the end of the first quarter, Chief Executive Officer David Pyott said. Allergan said in October it would consider a sale of the obesity business, including the Lap-Band device, as revenue declined and concerns rose about the weight-loss procedure. “There’s a lot of interest, some strategic companies, but especially in terms of numbers, private equity players,” Pyott said yesterday in an interview at the annual health-care conference sponsored by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) in San Francisco. “Sometime in the first quarter this will come to pass.” Allergan in November said it would buy a unit of SkinMedica Inc. for $350 million to expand its skin-care business. Botox, with about $1.6 billion in 2011 sales, is the Irvine, California-based company’s best seller. Revenue for the obesity intervention unit will be about $160 million in 2012, the company said in a statement in October. Sales declined from $203.1 million last year and a peak of $296 million in 2008, the company reported.
