A British newspaper has tipped GlaxoSmithKline as a potential buyer of the ailing pharmaceutical arm of Germany's Bayer AG.
The Independent on Sunday said Glaxo was in "significant talks" over a sale of Bayer's drugs operations, citing sources close to the UK drug company.
Glaxo, along with Switzerland's Roche, has been widely touted as a buyer of Bayer's drugs unit after the German firm said on Tuesday it had dropped a key demand for a majority stake in a pharmaceutical partnership, opening the way for it to find a partner for its struggling drugs business sooner than expected.
Gaining control of the ailing drugs business would cost around eight billion euros and would provide Glaxo with several products, including the anthrax drug Cipro, as well as boosting Glaxo's product development pipeline, the newspaper said.
No one at GlaxoSmithKline was immediately available for comment. Glaxo and Bayer have a co-promotion and co-development deal for impotence drug Levitra, which would rival Pfizer's blockbuster Viagra.
Levitra, known generically as vardenafil, originally was developed by Bayer. The troubles at Bayer's drugs business stem mainly from last year's costly recall of top-selling cholesterol drug Baycol.