Bayer has declined comment on a Bloomberg News report that has the conglomerate exploring the selloff of its diabetes management products business, and the acquisition of the animal-drug business spun out last year from Pfizer, as part of an ongoing restructuring that prompted the company to buy Merck & Co.’s consumer products business earlier this year.

The Bloomberg report cited three unnamed “people familiar with the matter” as sources for its report, which said that Bayer is working with Credit Suisse Group to carry out the potential sale of the diabetes unit. According to the report, diabetes could fetch between €1 billion ($1.25 billion) and €2 billion ($2.5 billion) from would-be buyers, which Bloomberg identified as including private-equity firms such as Cinven, EQT Partners, KKR, and Triton Advisers.

Bayer is also interested in buying Zoetis, the $22 billion-a-year animal-health company spun out from Pfizer, Bloomberg added, citing one of its unnamed sources. Bayer sees no rush to bid for Zoetis, the source added, because no auction has started, and because it plans first to sell off diabetes and its plastics unit, according to the report, to which Zoetis has declined comment.

“It probably would be better to concentrate on their growth business, which is the pharma pipeline and the animal- health business,” Ulle Woerner, an analyst at Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg in Stuttgart, Germany, told Bloomberg. “It’s going to be hard to sell it at a good price.”

The diabetes unit produces Contour® and Contour Next meters and test strips for measuring blood glucose, which last year generated €722 million (about $900 million) in sales; as well as the Glucofacts® Deluxe Diabetes Management Software. Just last year, Joerg Reinhardt, former chief executive officer of Bayer HealthCare, said the company had no plans to sell its diabetes unit.

Earlier this month, activist investor Bill Ackman took an 8.5% stake in Zoetis, leading to speculation that he would press for a sale of the company, a restructuring, or increased dividends and share buybacks. Zoetis responded by moving to prevent a hostile takeover through adoption of a poison-pill shareholder plan.

Bayer’s reported interest in selling diabetes and buying Zoetis comes six months after the conglomerate shelled out $14.2 billion to acquire Merck’s consumer-drug business, which includes widely-sold products such as Afrin nasal sprays, Claritin allergy drugs, Coppertone sunblock, and Dr. Scholls foot care products. That deal creates the world’s second-biggest consumer health products company to Johnson & Johnson, and will be based at Bayer’s U.S. East Coast hub in Whippany, NJ.

Bayer prevailed over Reckitt Bensicker, which said April 29 it was dropping out of talks, and rival bidders that included Boehringer Ingelheim, Novartis, Procter & Gamble, and Sanofi.

In addition, Bayer and Merck launched a collaboration to co-develop and co-commercialize new cardiovascular therapeutics focused on modulators of the soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC) pathway, in a deal that could net Bayer as much as $2.1 billion.

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