Report: Bids for Pfizer unit top $14B
Pfizer seeing strong interest in its consumer products unit, which includes Listerine, Rolaids, Sudafed, even as P&G and private equity bidders stay on sideline.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Drugmaker Pfizer received bids worth more than $14 billion for its consumer products unit, which includes well-known products like Listerine, Rolaids and Sudafed, according to a published report.

The New York Times reports Pfizer (Research) received the offers from some of its large rivals, including British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline (Research), U.S. drug and consumer product maker Johnson & Johnson (Research), as well as a British household cleaning products maker, Reckitt Benckiser.

Pfizer announced in February that it would try to sell its consumer products unit in an effort to refocus on prescription drugs. The company said in March that it had seen interest in the unit and that it expected to close on a sale in the third quarter.

The unit had sales of $3.9 billion in 2005, up 10.3 percent, although that was down from 19 percent growth in 2004.

The Times reports that leading U.S. consumer company Procter & Gamble (Research) and most private equity firms eventually passed on bidding in the auction because the asking price was too high. But the paper reports that people involved in the auction said the bids received Tuesday show how much interest there was in big consumer brands.

Shares of P&G were up more than 1 percent in Frankfurt trading early Wednesday on the report that it was not participating in the auction, while shares of Pfizer, another Dow component were up 0.65 percent.

For a look at Pfizer's puzzle, click hereTop of page

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.