Japan's SoftBank Group Corp. has bought a $5 billion stake in Swiss company Roche Holding AG, placing a bet on the drugmaker's strategy to use data to develop drugs.
The Japanese conglomerate is now one of the largest investors in Roche, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and seen by Al Arabiya.net.
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Roche's sales were recently boosted by the production of coronavirus tests.
The pharmaceutical company has a dual-class stock structure with separate voting and non-voting shares. Founding families also own 50.1% of the voting class, while Novartis AG, another Swiss competitor, owns about a third, while the quality of shares held by SoftBank was not disclosed.
SoftBank believes that Roche's biotechnology division, which focuses on data-driven drug discovery and development, is undervalued, a source said. to Bloomberg.
Last year, Roche appointed Aviv Regev, a computing and systems biologist who was a principal member of Harvard University's Broad Institute, to lead the biotechnology research unit.
Roche is also working on developing a new treatment for coronavirus and Alzheimer's disease.
