Renowned Spanish drugmaker Grifols, known for its plasma-derived medicines, announced on July 4 the appointment of Rahul Srinivasan as its new CFO.
Four days later, Canadian investment fund Brookfield Corporation agreed to evaluate a takeover bid for Grifols, with the intent to delist it. The Grifols founding family owns a stake of around 30%, according to the latest data from Spanish securities regulator CNMV.
Enter Srinivasan, whose dealmaking expertise will come in handy as outgoing CFO Alfredo Arroyo gets ready to retire after 17 years. Grifols CEO Nacho Abia, in a prepared statement, praised Srinivasan for his “deep knowledge of corporate finance” as well as “his strong performance-oriented culture.”
Srinivasan certainly brings with him an extensive career in financial services. Over the course of 25 years, he has held senior leadership roles at big-name firms including KPMG and Credit Suisse. Most recently, he was head of EMEA leveraged finance and capital markets at Bank of America.
Auditing and M&A are among Srinivasan’s specialties.
“I look forward to partnering with Nacho, his senior management team, and the Board of this venerable institution that has made a huge difference to people’s lives with its portfolio of life-changing medicines across a wide range of therapeutic areas,” Srinivasan said in a prepared statement.
His appointment is set to begin on September 16—eight months after law firm Block & Leviton began investigating Grifols over alleged securities law violations. Between January and March, Gotham City Research, a short seller fund, published a series of reports questioning the Barcelona -based company’s finances. The scrutiny wiped out more than $3.8 billion of Grifols’s market value and the stock hit a 12-year low in March.
The company denied any wrongdoing and blamed Gotham’s “malicious, false and misleading insinuations” for sowing doubt among institutional investors.
The discussions between the Grifols family and Brookfield, if successful, would result in a joint takeover bid with the intent of delisting Grifols from the Nasdaq and the Bolsa de Madrid. Grifols currently boasts a total market cap exceeding $7 billion.
