Takeda in talks to buy Nycomed in $14.2 billion deal: report

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's largest drugmaker Takeda Pharmaceutical Co <4502.T> is in talks to buy privately-held Swiss rival Nycomed in a deal that could be valued at about $14.2 billion, Bloomberg News said, citing two people with knowledge of the matter.

Negotiations are at an advanced stage and a deal could be announced as early as next week, Bloomberg reported. No agreement has been reached yet and the talks could still fall apart, the news agency said.

It would be a second major deal for Takeda after it bought U.S. cancer drug specialist Millennium Pharmaceuticals in 2008 for some $9 billion and would give it a sorely needed boost to its presence in Europe and emerging markets such as Russia and the former Soviet Union.

"It is our policy not to comment on market rumors about business development activities," said Takeda spokeswoman Hisako Nagata.

Japanese drugmakers, including Daiichi Sankyo <4568.T> and Astellas Pharma <4503.T>, have been actively pursuing acquisitions to boost growth as they face the loss of patent protection on key medicine.

Nycomed's top product is Pantoprazole for heartburn, a field that Takeda knows well as it has Prevacid, a former blockbuster heartburn drug that has now lost patent protection.

Takeda has said it would be willing to take on debt for future deals. Its shares shed 0.3 percent in a Nikkei benchmark index <.N225> down 0.8 percent.

Nycomed has been the subject of much speculation about a sale or an IPO before, with the Wall Street Journal reporting in 2009 that the drugmaker had hired Goldman Sachs to explore a possible sale of the company, a deal that was said at the time to be worth as much as 10 billion euros.

Nycomed, which has 12,500 employees, is majority owned by four private equity firms, led by Nordic Capital with a 41 percent. The other three are Credit Suisse's DLJ Merchant Banking, Coller International Partners and Avista.

(Reporting by Renju Jose in BANGALORE and James Topham in TOKYO; Writing by Edwina Gibbs; Editing by Anshuman Daga)