Japan's Suntory closes in on Ribena and Lucozade deal A sale would also fire the starting gun on a global buying spree at the Japanese group, which plans to spend at least 500bn yen (£3.2bn) on acquisitions following the flotation of its soft drinks unit. The initial public offering, Asia's biggest this year, raised £2.5bn. The brands have attracted intense interest from a raft of private equity buyers since GSK put them up for sale in April, after deciding the drinks no longer fitted with the drug maker's portfolio. Major players including Blackstone and Lion Capital were thought to be eyeing up the drink brands with a view to bidding for them in an auction expected at the end of this month, but a deal with Suntory will thwart such plans. Reports of the likely sale helped boost GSK shares on Thursday morning following a blow to the pharmaceuticals giant after an experimental cancer vaccine failed to clear a major hurdle. GSK recorded a 2pc slide, the steepest opening fall in the FTSE 100 yesterday, after it announced that a treatment aimed at fighting skin cancer had proven ineffective for the majority of patients. The price then ticked up following news of the likely deal with Suntory. The treatment, which is aimed at fighting skin cancer, is in a particularly high-risk area for Glaxo as the science behind it is largely unproven. Analysts have refrained from including this project in forecasts, given the high degree of uncertainty, but still expressed diasppointment at the result. "In our view the vaccine could have been one of three particularly transformative pipeline opportunities," said Savvas Neophytou at Panmore Gordon, adding that while he was "disappointed," the result represented a "missed upgrade opportunity," rather than a reason to lower GSK's outlook. Glaxo said it would nonetheless proceed with trials on the vaccine to see if it benefited a smaller subset of patients with a specific genetic trait. It is also being tested in lung cancer.