Femring

A FORMER drugs salesman from Northern Ireland today cashed in Pounds 100 million worth of shares in Galen, the drugs company he founded 36 years ago.

Dr Allen McClay sold his last remaining shares in the Craigavon- based company today.

Investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Benson was given the task of selling his 6.3% stake through an accelerated bookbuilding which saw the share price dip 21p to 847p.

McClay held just over 12 million shares, which the bank said it had placed at between 825p and 830p.

McClay, 71, has started his Easter holidays early, according to his new company, Clinical Trial Services, which he bought out from Galen 16 months ago.

Galen floated on the stock market in 1997 and McClay stood down as president four years later. Under his directorship the company expanded rapidly with its emphasis on drugs and treatments.

It specialised in contraceptive pills, pre-menstrual disorder treatments and skin conditions. Its most recent hit product is Femring, an intravaginal deliverer of hormone replacement therapy.

After McClay's retirement Galen shares dived from a five-year peak of 972p, touching a low of 270p two years ago. But talk of a takeover bid from the US and on/off merger talks have seen the price recover strongly over the past 12 months.

The soft-spoken, unmarried Ulsterman is generally reckoned to be the province's richest man with a fortune of Pounds 200 million. He is also regarded as a leading philanthropist with his McClay Trust a major supporter of Belfast's Queen's University schools of Chemistry and Pharmacy. The Trust funded the building of a new Pounds 3.5 million research centre attached to Belfast City Hospital.

McClay has sold two previous tranches of shares. Last summer he sold 700,000 netting Pounds 5 million and attracting the attention of the Financial Services Authority because the sale came just the week before a putative bidder walked away.

Last December he sold 4.28 million shares, raising the Pounds 20 million he needed to buy the pharmaceutical development and manufacturing division from Galen.

This was added to his existing companies Clinical Trial Services and Chemical Synthesis Service whose new Pounds 25 million laboratory was opened by Senator George Mitchell last September. McClay also owns a chain of pharmacies.

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