Denka Completes the Acquisition of Icon Genetics GmbH, a German Bio-Pharmaceutical R&D Company, Making It a Wholly Owned Subsidiary

Den­ka Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (head­quar­ters: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; pres­i­dent: Man­abu Yamamo­to; here­inafter “Den­ka”) here­by announces that on August 21, 2017 it had com­plet­ed the process of acquir­ing 100% of the shares of Icon Genet­ics GmbH (head­quar­ters: Halle, Sach­sen-Anhalt, Ger­many; CEO: Kazuyu­ki Hiru­ta; here­inafter “Icon”).

As pre­vi­ous­ly announced on August 7, 2015 via a press release titled “Announce­ment of Acqui­si­tion of Shares (Own­er­ship) in Icon Genet­ics GmbH, a Ger­man Bio-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal R&D Com­pa­ny,” Den­ka signed an agree­ment with Nomad Bio­science GmbH (head­quar­ters: Munich, Ger­many; CEO: Prof. Dr. Yuri Gle­ba; here­inafter “Nomad”), the par­ent com­pa­ny of Icon, with regard to the trans­fer of all Icon shares held by Nomad to Den­ka. Under an agree­ment man­dat­ing the share trans­fer to be under­tak­en in two sep­a­rate rounds, on August 20, 2015, Den­ka acquired 51% of Nomad’s Icon hold­ings, mak­ing Icon its sub­sidiary, and, on August 21, 2017, Den­ka acquired the remain­ing 49% shares. Den­ka has thus com­plet­ed the process of mak­ing Icon a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary.

Cur­rent­ly, the Den­ka Group is uti­liz­ing mag­nI­CON®, a tech­no­log­i­cal plat­form cre­at­ed by Icon, in the devel­op­ment of norovirus and sea­son­al influen­za vac­cine pro­duc­tion tech­nolo­gies, with the aim of deliv­er­ing nov­el solu­tions that will replace con­ven­tion­al tech­nolo­gies. The Group also uses this plat­form in the man­u­fac­ture of anti­gens used in diag­nos­tic reagents.

Hav­ing posi­tioned the health­care field as a growth dri­ver sup­port­ing the expan­sion of its spe­cial­ty busi­ness­es, the Den­ka Group will con­cen­trate its man­age­ment resources in this field and there­by accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of next-gen­er­a­tion prod­ucts.

In addi­tion, the impact of the afore­men­tioned share acqui­si­tion is reflect­ed in oper­at­ing results fore­casts for the fis­cal year end­ing March 31, 2018.

Out­line of Icon