In 2011, the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi acquired Genzyme.
Genzyme was an American biotechnology company founded in Boston in 1981 and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It became especially known for treatments for rare diseases, including Cerezyme for Gaucher disease and Fabrazyme for Fabry disease. Those specialized medicines made Genzyme strategically valuable to a large pharmaceutical group seeking to expand beyond conventional mass-market drugs.
Sanofi first announced a bid in August 2010, offering about $18.5 billion, but Genzyme’s board rejected the proposal. The companies eventually reached an agreement involving contingent value rights linked to the performance of certain products. Sanofi declared the full acquisition in February 2011, valuing the transaction at approximately $20.1 billion.
A common mix-up is confusing Sanofi with Aventis, its former name: the company dropped the “-Aventis” suffix in 2011. Genzyme operated as a wholly owned Sanofi subsidiary for years, later becoming integrated into Sanofi’s broader organization.