(Yicai) Sept. 16 -- Bristol Myers Squibb has sold its controlling stake in what was the first American ian pharmaceuticals joint venture to be set up in China, as part of the drugmaker’s repositioning of global resources and regional strategy.

Bristol Myers has inked an agreement to sell all of its 60 percent stake in Sino-American Shanghai Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical, known as the SASS Plant, an insider at the New York-based firm told Yicai, without disclosing the buyer’s name.

The SASS Plant was formed with Shanghai Pharmaceuticals Holding and Sinopharm Group in 1982 after China started its economic reforms and opening-up. It mainly produces established, off-patent drugs such as cefradine capsules and metformin hydrochloride tablets.

The sale is meant to better align global resource allocation and regional market strategy, ensuring that Bristol Myers's products remain reliably available to patients in China and around the world over the long term, according to the insider.

In recent years, China’s centralized drug-buying program under its national health insurance system has sharply reduced profits from off-patent branded drugs. As a result, multinational pharmaceutical companies have found it difficult to earn strong returns from these products in China and are increasingly shifting their focus to innovative medicines.

Several global drugmakers, including UCB, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Takeda, and Pfizer, have already sold their off-patent drug businesses in China. For instance, Belgium’s UCB sold its local business for USD680 million last year.

Bristol Myers remains firmly committed to China, the source said, adding that the firm will speed up the introduction of cutting-edge treatments for a wider range of diseases into the Chinese market and make every effort to improve drug accessibility, the person pointed out.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev