Business Roundup

Kuraray is selling its European polyvinyl butyral films business to the private equity firm GVC for $15 million. Kuraray needed to divest the unit, which has a plant in Germany and an R&D center in Belgium, to satisfy regulator concerns over its $543 million deal last year to buy DuPont’s glass laminating and vinyls business.

Celanese has purchased Cool Polymers, a North Kingstown, R.I., compounder of thermally and electrically conductive polymers. Celanese says the purchase adds to its capabilities in polymer chemistry and formulation.

DAK Americas will expand capacity at its polyester staple fiber plant near Charleston, S.C., by 55 million lb per year. When completed next spring, the project will boost DAK’s North American polyester fiber capacity to about 500 million lb, according to the Mexican-owned firm.

Illumina has selected three start-up companies to receive $100,000 apiece in support, access to sequencing equipment, and wet lab space as its new genomics incubator program gets under way. The start-ups are biopharmaceutical firm Encoded Genomics, agricultural technology firm EpiBiome, and diagnostics maker Xcell Biosciences.

AbbVie will pay a $1.64 billion breakup fee to Shire as a penalty for pulling out of the firms’ $54 billion merger agreement. AbbVie decided the deal presented too much risk after the U.S. reinterpreted tax rules to remove the deal’s fiscal benefits. Meanwhile, Shire plans to double its product sales to $10 billion by 2020.

Johnson & Johnson will spend $200 million to accelerate its development and production of a vaccine against the Ebola virus. Discovered in a research program with NIH, the product combines vaccines from J&J and the Danish firm Bavarian Nordic. J&J hopes to manufacture more than 1 million doses next year.