Novartis sells influenza vaccine to CSL

The international reshuffling of pharmaceutical products and businesses continued Monday when the Swiss firm Novartis resumed its exit from vaccines by selling its influenza vaccine to Australia's CSL Ltd.

CSL will pay Novartis $275 million for the flu vaccine and operate the business through its bioCSL subsidiary. Novartis' influenza vaccine had $527 million in sales in 2013.

CSL Behring, another subsidiary, operates from King of Prussia. The unit makes plasma protein medications used to treat conditions such as hemophilia, von Willebrand disease, primary immune deficiencies, and hereditary angioedema.

In April, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline announced a multipart deal that involved a joint venture for consumer products, with GSK sending its existing cancer drugs to Novartis and Novartis giving GSK most of its vaccines.

GSK did not get Novartis' flu vaccine because GSK already had its own and the companies feared regulators would balk on antitrust grounds.

GSK is based in London, but some of its vaccine personnel work at company facilities in and around Philadelphia.

CSL Ltd. is based in Melbourne, Australia, and its bioCSL unit has been in the influenza-vaccine business for more than 50 years, the company said.

"CSL has demonstrated its ability to make the most of specialist pharmaceutical acquisitions in areas we know well, and this transaction has the potential to create a global platform for bioCSL that is comparable in many aspects to our global protein science business," managing director and chief executive officer Paul Perreault said in a statement.