Eisai and Nichi-Iko Pharmaceutical, a Japan-headquartered generic-drug company, have entered into a capital and business alliance as well as a share transfer agreement relating to their generic pharmaceuticals businesses, which includes Eisai’s generics subsidiary, Elmed Eisai.

Elmed Eisai was established as a wholly owned subsidiary of Eisai in 1996 with the concept of developing value-added generic drugs that are accessibly priced and easy for patients to administer. Under the agreement, Eisai will transfer all shares of Eisai’s wholly owned subsidiary, Elmed Eisai Co., to Nichi-Iko incrementally in accordance with progress of the strategic alliance agreement, and both companies will promote cooperation in building Eisai’s Total Inclusive Ecosystem, a business platform, as well as collaboration on the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) business promoted primarily at Eisai’s plant in Vizag, India.

Under the agreement, Nichi-Iko will take a capital stake in Elmed Eisai, and the two companies will integrate their strengths, such as Nichi-Iko’s product lineup and production capabilities together with Elmed Eisai’s techniques for manufacturing value-added generic drugs. “Taking this business integration as an opportunity, the two companies intend to create new generic pharmaceutical business models through high quality value-added generic drugs in order to contribute to more patients,” said Eisai in a company statement.

Eisai is building a platform which has as its core Eisai’s ability to hear and take into account the needs of patients and design solutions to them and to propose outcomes based on medical data, including clinical-trial data and real-world data as well as access strategies, according to the company. Aiming to create patient value, Eisai is loading various kind of content onto this platform and expanding what it terms as its “Total Inclusive Ecosystem” that delivers various solutions, such as pharmaceuticals, to all of its stakeholders, including patients.

Through the agreement, Nichi-Iko, who has a wide range of generic pharmaceuticals, will be added as a content provision partner. This will enhance the Total Inclusive Ecosystem for dementia, liver disease, and other diseases as well as further expand contribution to patients in regional healthcare. With the promotion of these strategies, Nichi-Iko expects to further strengthen its development for new markets such as comprehensive community care. In Nichi-Iko’s Profit Management Plan 2019, the company considers that Eisai’s API supply will contribute to the achievement of this plan.

Under the agreement, Eisai will promote collaboration on API supply with Nichi-Iko on various points such as price, quality, and stable supply. For Nichi-Iko’s development of new products as well, Eisai’s API development ability and manufacturing techniques will be used to improve efficiency and make submissions as well as obtain approval.

After discussing the conditions and other details in the near future, from October 2018, Eisai will commence co-promotion of Nichi-Iko’s products, and Nichi-Iko will commence co-promotion of Elmed Eisai’s products.

Eisai is scheduled to transfer 20% of the outstanding shares issued in its wholly owned subsidiary Elmed Eisai to Nichi-Iko on April 2, 2018, when the strategic alliance agreement is initiated. This will make Elmed Eisai an affiliated company accounted for by the equity method for Nichi-Iko. Upon condition that certain progress has been achieved by the two companies in the aforementioned alliance agreement, Eisai is scheduled to transfer 13.4% of shares to Nichi-Iko on October 1, 2018 (planned) and all remaining shares on April 1, 2019 (planned). Once all these transactions are executed, Elmed Eisai will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Nichi-Iko.

Source: Eisai