Pharmaceutical services company United Drug and contract manufacturer Catalent shared some very private moments at one time. Now the two are battling in court with the jilted Catalent claiming that its one-time suitor was way too free with its secrets over Catalent's packaging manufacturing business.
United Drug, according to Outsourcing-Pharma, has just asked the court to dismiss the suit in which Catalent claims that United Drug CEO Liam Fitzgerald made "unauthorized and improper disclosure of information about its packaging business in two conference calls in November."
Catalent claims that the remarks in a call with analysts not only breached their confidentiality agreement, The Wall Street Journal reports, but undermined its negotiating position with potential buyers. It sold the unit in June to private equity firm Frazier Healthcare Ventures for some amount less than the $80 million United said it might pay, the newspaper reports.
In one of the calls, Fitzgerald told analysts, "We are also benefiting from the fact that the third player in the market, Catalent, is currently going through a sale process and has been underinvested through its private-equity owners over the last couple of years, and as a result of those two changes we are picking up a lot of clients from that business," reports The Wall Street Journal, quoting from a transcript. "So we are down to, really, a two-player market in the U.S. market."
United three days ago announced that it had made a different acquisition, paying $61 million for the U.S. and U.K. clinical services businesses from Bilcare.
- read the WSJ story
- get an update from Outsourcing-Pharma
- see the United Drug Bilcare press release
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