The pharmaceutical company Novartis wants to bring its copycat drug division Sandoz to the Swiss stock exchange as an independent company.
The IPO is planned for the second half of 2023, Novartis announced on Thursday.
Sandoz comprises Novartis' biopharmaceutical generic and over-the-counter (OTC) medicines businesses.
Novartis announced last October that it would review all options for Sandoz.
The group had given itself a deadline of the end of this year for this.
This review has now shown that a spin-off from Sandoz through a 100% spin-off is in the best interests of shareholders, Novartis said.
This will create Europe's largest generics company and a global leader in biosimilars.
Novartis, in turn, will become a more focused company as a result.
Generics are imitation products of medicines with the same active ingredient whose patent protection has expired and which are often cheaper than the first-party products.