November 8, 2021: -On Thursday, Novartis AG, a shareholder in Roche for more than 20 years, said the two Swiss drugmakers that are agreeing, Roche would buy Novartis’s nearly one-third voting stake in its cross-town rival for $20.7 billion.

Novartis agrees to sell 53.3 million Roche bearer shares for a price of $388.99 per share that reflects the volume-weighted average price of the Roche non-voting equity certificates from the past 20 trading days until November 2, Novartis said in a statement.

“After over 20 years as a shareholder of Roche, concluding that now is the correct time to monetize our investment,” Novartis Chief Executive Vas Narasimhan said.

“Today’s announcement is consistent with our strategic focus, and we are deploying the proceeds from the transaction in line with our capital allocation priorities to increase shareholder value and continue to reimagine medicine,” he said.

Novartis said it would report a gain from the sale of the stake of approximately $14 billion.

The transaction is subject to Roche’s shareholders of Roche at an extraordinary general meeting on November 26.

Roche said that the debt-financed repurchase was conditional upon the approval of a capital reduction by the cancellation of the repurchased shares and the support of the interim financial statements prepared for the transaction.

Roche said the “disentanglement” of the two competitors would give it “full strategic flexibility.” Its outlook for 2021 and said it wanted to increase its dividend for 2021.