HONG KONG – A group of investors, including one from Singapore, have acquired a majority stake in Iceland-based biosimilar and generics maker Alvogen Inc. The company has been expanding both its expertise in biotech and its presence in Asia-Pacific.

CVC Capital Partners is leading the consortium of investors that also includes Singapore-based investment company Temasek Holdings and Vatera Healthcare Partners. Alvogen's CEO, Robert Wessman, will remain with a significant stake through his investment firm, Aztiq Pharma, and former major shareholder Pamplona Capital Management also will retain a small stake.

"This is a very positive development for our growth strategy," Halldór Kristmannsson, vice president of organizational development at Alvogen, told BioWorld Today. "CVC and Temasek will be partners for growth and are totally aligned with our strategy. . . . The investment they make will provide us with greater financial resource to pursue acquisitions and make other strategic investments.

"We have not disclosed the shares acquired specifically, but we have said it's a majority," said Kristmannsson.

The value of the deal also was not disclosed but people close to the transaction said it values Alvogen at about $2 billion.

"Collectively, [the investors] will provide significant experience and additional resources to help accelerate our strong momentum and take Alvogen towards its ambition of being one of the leading generics players in the world today," said Alvogen's Wessman.

Best known as a generic drugmaker, Alvogen has been making strides into biosimilars, which it sees as a market with huge potential. It has been working with its U.S. business partner Hospira Inc. since 2011 and the pair has launched three biosimilars recently in the Central and Eastern Europe area.

The company is marketing biosimilars mostly with selected alliances, but the R&D and manufacturing part is also something Alvogen would like to tap into.

"We are already quite advanced in biosimilars," said Kristmannsson. "We were the first to launch [biosimilar] infliximab in Europe with Hospira last year and we are selling several biosimilars in the Central and Eastern Europe region today."

Alvogen is building its biotech platform via sister company Alvotech, which will be responsible for product development and manufacture while Alvogen will manage marketing and distribution. Alvotech broke ground in November 2013 in the science park of the University of Iceland. Now that facility has recruited more than 40 biotech professionals and is expected to open very soon, bringing products to the market by as early as 2018.

"As for the future, we announced last year that we would invest €500 million [US$559 million] in biosimilars in the next few years by building our own pipeline of four monoclonal antibodies that are in current development and by investing in a new state-of-the-art manufacturing site that will be opened by year-end 2015," Kristmannsson said.

Apart from its efforts to expand its biotech capacity, Alvogen is also placing a big emphasis on Asian markets.

"We have been building a regional platform in APAC since 2012 via our own offices and also by making strategic acquisitions . . . [such as] Lotus Pharmaceuticals in Taiwan, Kunwha in Korea and, most recently, Dream Pharma in Korea as well," said Kristmannsson. "We do have offices in China and we have products for Japan in our pipeline."

The company announced at the beginning of this month that its South Korean subsidiaries, Kunwha Pharmaceuticals and Dream Pharma, will trade together as Alvogen Korea. That decision was made after Kunwha's merger with the obesity drug leader Dream Pharma.

"There were a number of compelling reasons to rebrand the combined company to Alvogen," said Renaat Jenssen, executive vice president of Alvogen APAC.

"Following the successful merger of Dream and Kunwha, we wanted to highlight the increased scale and enhanced capabilities of the group under one name," Jenssen said.

"The rebrand will strengthen the tie between Alvogen and our Korean subsidiaries and help position Alvogen Korea as a reliable and fast growing regional player," Jenssen added.

In addition to the name change, Alvogen Korea will adopt a new corporate identity and will continue to be listed on the South Korean Stock exchange (NS002250).

Alvogen acquired Dream Pharma for $187 million in 2014 and became the major shareholder of Kunwha back in 2012. Dream Pharma has 35 percent market share in the South Korean weight-loss market.

The combined company Alvogen Korea has 200-plus products on the market and 50 more in the pipeline. The combination makes one of the largest generic drugmakers in Korea.