How it started
History
Vectura was formed in 1997 at the University of Bath as a start-up pharmaceuticals business. In 1999 it acquired Co-ordinated Drug Development and the Centre for Drug Formulation Studies. The company moved from the university campus to a site at Chippenham, Wiltshire in 2002.
In 2006, two years after being listed on the Alternative Investment Market, Vectura acquired Innovata Biomed plc, another developer of pulmonary products, and then moved onto the full list of the LSE. It acquired Activaero, a German manufacturer in the same sector, for £108 million in March 2014.
In June 2016, Vectura completed a £441 million merger with Skyepharma, a maker of devices such as asthma inhalers; it was stated that the merged company would continue to be known as Vectura.
The former Skyepharma manufacturing plant at Lyon, France, makes various oral products including tablets. After Vectura decided to concentrate on inhaled products, in June 2021 the company supported a buy-out of the site by its management, with finance from Bpifrance.
In July 2021, American tobacco company Philip Morris International made an offer to buy Vectura for £1 billion. The Carlyle Group, an American private equity firm, also submitted an offer which was £44m lower. The board subsequently accepted the offer from Philip Morris International and, in September, it confirmed that circa 75% of shareholders had supported the takeover. The takeover by Philip Morris was widely condemned.
From Wikipedia’s article on Vectura Group, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2