NOVARTIS sale de compras...

Novartis AG is willing to spend up to $3 billion on acquisitions of consumer-health or veterinary assets to bolster the drugmaker’s undersized businesses in those areas, Chief Executive Officer Joe Jimenez said.

Novartis also would consider generic-drug, biotechnology or diagnostics purchases, Jimenez said in an interview yesterday at the company’s Basel, Switzerland, headquarters. There’s a dearth of available assets, he said.

“We do expect to make bolt-on acquisitions to these five platforms, and we could do that today,” Jimenez, 51, said. “And when I say bolt-on, I mean anything from $1 billion to $3 billion.” He declined to comment on possible targets or the timing of potential purchases.

Jimenez aims to bolster Novartis’s sales as the company, Europe’s second-largest drugmaker by revenue, prepares to face generic competition to its best-selling prescription medicines, Diovan for hypertension and the cancer drug Gleevec. Other companies also are on the hunt. Announced takeovers in the drug industry have totaled $35.5 billion this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, up 28 percent from a year earlier.

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