Pharmacia May Be Close to Deal for AT&T Property

At least a dozen major firms are said to have shown solid interest in the 140-acre, amenity-loaded campus since it hit the market, and Pharmacia has emerged as the leading contender, according to a published report. Pharmacia officials will not comment on the company's interest in the property. AT&T spokesman Jeffrey Roberts will only confirm that talks are underway on a possible sale, but won't say who's involved.

Details, including a possible sale price, have also not been disclosed. Indeed, a tight curtain of secrecy has been drawn around the proceedings. The property has been valued in the $270 million range, and while some observers feel that AT&T will bail out at somewhat less than that, others say the amount of interest the property has drawn could give the telecom giant a solid payday.

"Given the property's location and the way it's loaded with 'goodies,' you'd have to think that despite the market's condition, AT&T will do all right with it," suggests one source with knowledge of the situation.

Until a few years ago, Pharmacia was a little-known London-based company. In 1998, the company bought Upjohn and moved its headquarters across the Atlantic to Bridgewater, NJ, and followed that with the acquisition in 2000 of Monsanto, including its G.D. Searle drug unit.

Since then, the company has parlayed such hot--and heavily advertised--drugs as Rogaine, Celebrex, Detrol and Nicorette into $14 billion a year in sales. Pharmacia has grown to become the fifth biggest pharma company based in the US, and the eighth largest globally. The 60,000-employee company spends more than $2 billion a year on R&D alone.

Pharmacia is currently headquartered in the 550,000-sf former Beneficial Finance complex in nearby Peapack, NJ, about five miles from AT&T's Basking Ridge facilities. The company has also taken all 233,000 sf of the Somerset Financial Center in Bridgewater, NJ, and has a third location nearby.

A proposal, a year and a half ago, to expand the old Beneficial complex to some 1.2 million sf to get the company's operations on one site has run into trouble from local planning officials and residents. But Pharmacia appears to have found a way to accomplish that, according to sources.