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LONDON (Reuters) – About 20 bidders are readying offers for all or parts of Astra Tech, the dental and scrutiny devices organisation that AstraZeneca Plc (AZN.L) hopes could fetch $2 billion, grouping old with the concern said.

Astra Tech, which had revenues terminal year of $535 million, is the world's third-biggest dental pass concern behindhand Switzerland's Straumann Holding (STMN.S) and Nobel Biocare Holding (NOBN.VX). It also sells scrutiny devices, focusing chiefly on urology.

Parent AstraZeneca, which prototypal flagged the understanding in November, has dispatched so-called "information memorandums" to a slew of medtech companies and clannish equity firms, the grouping said, and requested preliminary bids in March. An initial screening weeded out dozens of another possibleness bidders, they added.

Many bidders haw only be interested in one of the digit disparate arms, and AstraZeneca has invited suitors to attain bids for either limb or for the whole business, the grouping said.

"The conversations are ongoing, and we are going through the strategic review process as we speak," a consort spokeswoman said. She declined to provide boost details.

The auction highlights AstraZeneca's current pore on boosting returns to shareholders as it heads into a gesture of papers expiries on some of its biggest commerce medicines including Nexium, for heartburn and stomach ulcers, and Seroquel for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

The assemble terminal month declared a doubling of its deal buyback information to $4 billion in 2011.

In oppositeness to some of its rivals, much as GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L), Novartis (NOVN.VX) and Sanofi-Aventis (SASY.PA), AstraZeneca has stayed focused on its set pharmaceuticals playing rather than seeking diversification.

(Reporting by Quentin Webb; added news by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Will Waterman)

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