Apax Partners has acquired a 50% stake in Metagen, the biotechnology unit of German pharmaceutical company Schering AG, for €42m ($37.9m).

The acquisition comes after Schering said last week that it planned to sell the holding to an unnamed group. Schering will retain a 43.5% stake in Metagen, while the management of the biotechnology unit will keep a 6.5% stake in the company. Metagen's head of research and development plans to buy a further 5% in the company. Schering had initially been planning a public offering of shares in Metagen in 2001. But the German pharmaceutical company decided to sell the stake to Apax instead due to recent weakness in shares of German biotechnology companies.