21 February 2023 – Bavarian Nordic, a vaccine company, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Emergent BioSolutions’ travel vaccines portfolio for up to USD 380 million, including an upfront payment of USD 270 million.

The deal will add two marketed travel vaccines, a late-stage vaccine candidate, and research, development, manufacturing and commercial capabilities to Bavarian Nordic’s portfolio. The vaccines included in the deal are Vivotif for the prevention of typhoid fever, Vaxchora against cholera and a phase 3 vaccine candidate for the prevention of chikungunya virus.

Bavarian Nordic is a fully integrated vaccines company focused on the research and development, manufacturing and commercialization of lifesaving vaccines. The company is a global leader in smallpox and mpox vaccines, which have been developed through a long-standing partnership with the US government to enhance public health preparedness. Bavarian Nordic’s commercial product portfolio also contains market-leading vaccines against rabies and tick-borne encephalitis. Using its live virus vaccine platform technology (MVA-BN) and in-licensed technologies, Bavarian Nordic has created a diverse portfolio of proprietary and partnered product candidates designed to save and improve lives by unlocking the power of the immune system, including phase 3 development programs for a respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine for older adults and a next-generation COVID-19 vaccine.

Walder Wyss AG acted as Swiss counsel to Bavarian Nordic. The team has been co-led by Florian Gunz Niedermann (Partner, Corporate/M&A) and Christian Hagen (Managing Associate, Corporate/M&A) and further included Michael Kissling (Associate, Corporate/M&A), Michael Isler (Partner, Regulatory, Competition, IT and IP), Amina Chammah (Associate, Regulatory, Competition, IT and IP), Simone Wetzstein (Partner, Employment), Lea Germann (Associate, Employment), Stephanie Wichmann (Associate, Employment), Angelina Pellegrini (Associate, Employment), Francis Nordmann (Partner, Real Estate), André Kuhn (Partner, Real Estate), Sabrina Kunz (Associate, Real Estate), Remo Di Marco (Associate, Real Estate), Maurus Winzap (Partner, Tax), Janine Corti (Counsel, Tax), Monique Sturny (Partner, Competition) and Andreas Wildi (Partner, Life Sciences).