French drugmaker Sanofi will face market scrutiny over what it plans to do with its cash as the prospect of a massive buyback of its shares held by L'Oreal fades.French cosmetics firm L'Oreal and Nestle loosened a 40-year partnership on Tuesday when L'Oreal said it would purchase 8 percent of its capital for 6.5 billion euros ($9 billion) from the Swiss food group - but did not need to sell any of its Sanofi shares to fund the deal.L'Oreal thus remains Sanofi's biggest shareholder with a stake of close to 9 percent, worth about $12 billion, and its Chief Executive Jean-Paul Agon told a conference call that L'Oreal was "very happy" with that situation.Shares in Sanofi dropped nearly 2 percent after the deal was announced, reflecting disappointment over the lost opportunity for the drugmaker to proceed with a debt-funded share buyback that would have substantially boosted its earnings per share.
Sanofi SA, formerly Sanofi-Aventis, is a global and diversified healthcare company based in France. Shares of SNY fell by 0.66% or $-0.32/share to $48.11. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $46.16 and as high as $55.94. On average, 1629050 shares of SNY exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 4372445.
Source
