Galen founder and former president Mr Allen McClay is selling a 6.3 per cent stake in the Northern Irish pharmaceutical manufacturer in a deal handled by investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, dealers said today.
Dresdner and Galen were both unavailable to comment.
One dealer said the placing should be priced at a small discount to Monday's closing price of 848 pence, which values the stake at around £98 million ($181 million).
By 8.30 a.m. shares in Galen, which specialises in women's healthcare and contraceptive products but also makes acne creams and urology treatments, were down 2.6 per cent at 826p.
Mr Stuart Draper, an analyst at Dolmen Securities, said the extra supply of Galen stock on the market could lead to the shares falling back to around 800p.
"The stock has risen around 18 per cent since the start of January, so it's come a long way and the fact that it's being placed at a discount to yesterday's price would indicate this is not a ludicrously low level for it," he said.
Dolmen had downgraded the stock on Monday to "hold" from "buy" after Galen's failure to complete the sale of four products to Barr Pharmaceuticals by an end-March deadline, increasing the risk of generic challenge.