| Recordati Industria Chimica e Farmaceutica S.p.A. | |
|---|---|
| Type | Public (S.p.A.) |
| BIT: REC FTSE MIB component | |
| Industry | Pharmaceuticals |
| Founded | 1926 in Correggio, Italy |
| Founders | Giovanni Recordati |
| Headquarters | , Italy |
| Key people | Andrea Recordati (chairman) Rob Koremans (CEO) |
| Revenue | €2.618 billion (2025) |
Number of employees | 4,580+ (2025) |
| Parent | CVC Capital Partners (46.8%) |
| Website | www |
Recordati Industria Chimica e Farmaceutica S.p.A., known as Recordati, is an Italian pharmaceutical company based in Milan. It was founded in Correggio in 1926 by Giovanni Recordati, whose family ran a pharmacy in the town, and moved to Milan in 1953. The company has been listed on the Borsa Italiana since 1984. Since 2018 it has been controlled by the private equity firm CVC Capital Partners, which in 2026 made a tender offer with Groupe Bruxelles Lambert to take it off the stock exchange.
Giovanni Recordati came from a family of pharmacists who had settled in Correggio in the early 19th century. After graduating in chemistry and pharmacy from the University of Bologna, he set up a small laboratory attached to the family pharmacy and then a factory. The company was founded in 1926. Its products in the 1930s included Simpamina, a stimulant that athletes, students and pilots often took in excessive doses. Giovanni Recordati died in 1952. His son Arrigo moved the management and laboratories to Milan the following year and set up the first subsidiaries abroad, in Latin America. Production in Correggio ended in 1963 after a labour dispute.
From 2000 the group expanded abroad, mainly through acquisitions. Its antihypertensive drug lercanidipine lost patent protection in the main European markets in January 2010, and its sales fell by 13.7% in the first quarter of that year. Recordati hoped that carglumic acid, a treatment for a rare metabolic disorder approved in the United States in March 2010, would make it less dependent on lercanidipine. Giovanni Recordati, Arrigo's son and the group's chairman and chief executive, died in August 2016.
The family had been considering a sale since 2016, and disagreements among its members and political uncertainty in Italy delayed the talks with CVC. In June 2018 CVC agreed to buy the family's 51.8% stake for €3.03 billion, and said it planned to expand Recordati's business in treatments for rare diseases. The price was below the market price of about €34 a share, and the shares fell by almost 18% when trading resumed. CVC completed the purchase in December 2018 through the holding company Rossini Investimenti and made a mandatory offer for the remaining shares at €27.55 each. Only about 0.06% of the shares covered by the offer were tendered, and Recordati remained listed.
In December 2021 Recordati agreed to buy EUSA Pharma, a British company that sells treatments for rare cancers, for €750 million.
In May 2026 a consortium of CVC and Groupe Bruxelles Lambert agreed to offer €51.29 a share, about €10.7 billion in total, for all of Recordati's shares in order to delist the company. Rossini, which held 46.8% of the share capital, undertook to tender its shares. Some investors considered the price too low. The activist investor Palliser Capital asked the board to withdraw its support, and the four independent directors judged the offer financially inadequate and unfair to shareholders. In October 2026 the bidders raised the price to €53 a share, called it their best and final offer, and extended the acceptance period to 23 October. By 19 October the offer had been accepted for about 50.9% of the shares it covered.
In 2025 Recordati had revenue of €2.62 billion and more than 4,580 employees, and its products were sold in about 150 countries.