AK Life Sciences (Abacus) has been acquired at an unknown price by American multinational private equity firm Carlyle Group, which will now own the majority stake in the company.
The East Africa based pharmaceutical company with over 800 employees is one of the distributors of medical supplies in the region with branches in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda.
According to Carlyle Managing Director, Genevieve Sangudi, Abacas has the best in class distribution in class capabilities and an established regional platform to build on.
‘’We see an opportunity to support Abacas and to leverage Carlyle’s platform to provide broadening supplier relationships,’’ She added.
Sentiments that were also echoed by Mr Ramesh Babu who is one of the founders and managing directors of Abacus saying that the company has grown to become one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the region.
‘’We have created a strong platform for further growth and have established good relationships with large multinationals pharmaceuticals companies and local suppliers, ‘’ he said.
Adding that the company is excited to partner with Carlyle and hopes to benefit from their deeper industry knowledge and experience.
The acquisition of the pharmaceutical is one of the investments that Carlyle group has made in the industry at a total cost of more than $11.5 Billion.
The investment, however, comes at a time when fake medicine trade has become rampant in the continent with reports from the World Health Organisation (WHO) indicating that fake medicine contributes about 100,000 deaths annually across the continent.