St. Louis County plans $61M bond issue to hook Gallus Biopharmaceuticals
St. Louis Business Journal
November 9, 2010
By Kelsey Volkmann
Gallus Biopharmaceuticals, a new firm led by President and CEO Mark Bamforth, plans to buy and expand Johnson & Johnson's Centocor Biologics campus in Berkeley in St. Louis County.
Gallus entered into a non-binding letter of intent to purchase the Centocor Biologics facility on Le Bourget Drive. Gallus will inherit Centocor's current drug manufacturing operations and 180 employees, said Shelly Adams, Gallus' vice president of sales and marketing. Gallus and its investors plan to spend $71.5 million on its expansion and add 135 new jobs over the next several years, she said.
The St. Louis County Council will decide whether to issue up to $61 million in bonds to help the company pay for its expansion. The matter is on the agenda for tonight's meeting.
The county council is considering the incentives package in line with Gallus' wish to close on the deal by the end of the year, said Nancy Schnoebelen, vice president of marketing and communications for St. Louis County Economic Council.
President and CEO Bamforth was a senior vice president of corporate operations and pharmaceuticals for Genzyme, a Cambridge, Mass., biotechnology company, where he was responsible for Genzyme's global manufacturing operations and strategic capacity planning, as well as the pharmaceuticals business. In this role, Bamforth oversaw 12 manufacturing sites in the U.S. and Europe with 3,600 employees, according to Gallus' website.
Before 2000, Bamforth ran Genzyme's United Kingdom operations. Prior to joining Genzyme, Bamforth worked as a drilling engineer in the North Sea offshore oil industry and then as a chemical engineer in the whisky industry in Scotland.
Geoffrey Cox, a former executive vice president for pharmaceutical, diagnostic and genetics business units of Genzyme, has joined Gallus' board.
Biopharmaceuticals are medical drugs produced using biotechnology and include proteins and nucleic acids used for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes.
