Last Wednesday, Celltrion Inc has named JP Morgan as advisor to assist the firm remove its linkages from its founder, Seo Jung-jin. A day before, Seo Jung-jin made a surprise announcement of the disposition of all his shareholdings in the company he established ten years ago.
Celltrion is the largest biopharmaceutical company in South Korea in terms of revenue. It has announced the engagement of JP Morgan to the Wall Street Journal. JP Morgan would be providing advice as to all the deals needed for Seo to divest his shareholdings from the firm and its affiliates.
According to Seo, "I decided to sell my company to a multinational pharmaceutical company to make it a strong one that can guard off continuous suspircions and attacks by speculative investors." He decided to remove himself from the company because of the blaming speculative short selling against the company.
Celltrion is 20.7% owned by Celltrion Holdings and the latter has 97.3% ownership. The Celltrion stake is priced at US$894 million based on the Kosdaq market value closure.
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