Going private could give Recordati strategic flexibility and a stable source of capital, according to CVC Capital Partners and Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, which are offering to take the Italian pharma private for a 13% premium.
Recordati has received a massive offer from a pair of investment firms to take the Italian pharma giant off the public market and move forward as a privately-held drug developer.
The firms are offering €51.29 (around $59.5) per Recordati share, representing a 13% premium to the pharma’s closing price in March, when one of the bidders—CVC Capital Partners—first expressed its acquisition intent, according to a Friday news release. If it pushes through, the takeover could reach €10.73 billion in value, or approximately $12.44 billion.
Alongside CVC is Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GBL), a public investment holding company.
Recordati is “now entering a new phase of development, characterized by a number of strategic opportunities ahead,” the bidders wrote on Friday, contending that this exposes the pharma to “greater execution risk, longer development timelines and increased R&D investment.”
Going private will help Recordati as it enters this new phase of its business, the letter added, “providing strategic flexibility, stable capital base and aligned long-term shareholder support.”
In conjunction with Friday’s offer, Rossini—a company controlled by CVC and which holds 46.82% of Recordati’s share capital—has agreed to tender its shares to the prospective buyers. The offer, if it pushes through, would close in the fourth quarter of 2026, according to the press announcement.
Recordati’s go-private offer continues what PitchBook Senior Biotech Analyst Kazi Helal calls the “PE-ization of pharma,” referring to private equity firms. Over the past year or so, there has been a trend of biopharma companies increasingly turning toward private money to keep their drug development engines chugging along.
Private equity investors “are seeing opportunity now in biotech and distressed assets, and it’s hard to pass off,” Helal told BioSpace in July 2025. Meanwhile, many biotechs are struggling and could use an infusion of private money.
Arguably the most notable example of this deal type is bluebird bio, which was acquired by private firms Carlyle and SK Capital Partners for around $50 million last year.
A less extreme case is Lexeo Therapeutics, which in June 2025 secured $40 million in backing from Perceptive Xontogeny Venture Funds and venBio Partners to advance its gene therapies for cardiovascular diseases.
There’s also Anthos Therapeutics, which launched in February 2019 with $250 million from Blackstone Life Sciences and a blood thinner candidate from Novartis dubbed abelacimab. In February last year, Novartis decided it wanted its asset back and absorbed Anthos for $3.1 billion.
