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The story
GSK and Pfizer merged their consumer healthcare businesses in 2019. GSK owned just over two thirds of the joint venture, and Pfizer owned the remainder. Annual sales were around £10 billion across 120 markets in 2020. GSK then announced plans to spin off Haleon in 2022 to give the "tired drugmaker extra focus and firepower by gearing up and hiving off the consumer division," according to Reuters. Unilever offered £50 billion for the business in 2022, which GSK rejected. Nestlé examined the possibility of a bid in conjunction with Reckitt. In October 2023, GSK reduced its ownership in Haleon to 7.4%, and in January 2024 it further reduced its ownership to 4.2%.
In August 2023, Haleon sold its Lamisil antifungal brand to Karo Healthcare AB for £235 million, and in February 2024, Haleon sold its ChapStick lip care brand to Yellow Wood Partners for £401 million.
In March 2024, Pfizer reduced its share in Haleon from 32% to 24% per cent by selling 630 million shares in a public offering.
Further sales followed: in April 2024, Haleon announced that it would close its Sensodyne toothpaste factory in Maidenhead, moving that manufacturing to Slovakia, and it outsourced mouthwash manufacturing to an unrelated company and, in September 2024, the company completed the sale of its non-US nicotine replacement therapy business to Dr. Reddy's Laboratories in a deal worth £458 million.
In March 2025, Pfizer sold its entire stake in Haleon for £2.5 billion ($3.24 billion), exiting the consumer healthcare business it helped create by its 2019 joint venture with GSK.
From Wikipedia’s article on Haleon, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7