GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK) is trying to sell its remaining over-the-counter medicine brands as quickly as possible, Chief Financial Officer Simon Dingemans said.

Prestige Brands Holdings Inc. (PBH), maker of Comet cleaner and Murine eye solutions, last month agreed to buy 17 over-the- counter brands from London-based Glaxo for $660 million. Glaxo, the U.K.’s largest drugmaker, is continuing the process of divesting other brands still owned by the company, including the Alli diet pill, Dingemans said.

“We are keen to move the process along as quickly as we can,” he said in an interview yesterday at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. “We are engaged in discussions with a number of different parties.”

Dingemans wouldn’t elaborate on potential acquirers, and declined to give a time frame for the transaction. The leftover brands had sales of about 400 million pounds ($618 million) last year, Glaxo said in a Dec. 20 statement.

Chief Executive Officer Andrew Witty is trying to expand Glaxo’s business in oral health, wellness and nutrition, and plans to keep fast-growing brands such as Sensodyne toothpaste and the Panadol pain reliever.

“We decided to move on the U.S. piece first because it offered attractive values,” Dingemans said. The company then wanted to “explore the other pieces one by one,” he said.

‘Very Happy’

Glaxo is “very happy” with the current relationship with Human Genome Sciences Inc., its U.S. partner on the Benlysta lupus treatment, Dingemans said when asked about market speculation that Glaxo may make a bid for Human Genome.

“I see the rumors from time to time, it makes no difference to how we operate with them,” Dingemans said.

The U.K. drugmaker also is “very happy” with the performance of its Viiv Healthcare Ltd. venture with Pfizer Inc., which specializes in HIV treatments, according to Dingemans. Glaxo remains “open-minded” about options for Viiv in the future “but at the moment we are perfectly fine” with the current structure, the CFO said.

Reaching an agreement to sell the over-the-counter brands “has taken longer than expected, and that is clearly a function of the markets that we are in,” Dingemans said during the interview.

Thomas H. Lee Partners LP and Bain Capital LLC also submitted bids, and Paris-based Sanofi (SAN) was interested in some brands, people with knowledge of the process said Nov. 16, before an agreement was reached for assets in the U.S.

Alli and Appetite

Sanofi isn’t interested in buying the Alli diet pill, one of the products on sale, Chief Executive Officer Chris Viehbacher said in a May 6 interview.

Alli contains orlistat, a chemical that blocks the intestines from absorbing fat when taken as often as three times a day with meals. Orlistat has been linked to reports of liver injury, prompting consumer groups to demand its removal from the market. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced new warnings on the pill’s label in mid-2010.

Alli “was not a definitive factor” in slowing down the process, Dingemans said. But “some people have more appetite” for pieces of the portfolio than others, he said.

This led to the decision to split up the sale, Dingemans said.

“We decided at the end of the day we would do better to break it up and take individual pieces that we can match to where the greatest interest and the greatest value sits,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Albertina Torsoli in San Francisco at atorsoli@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Phil Serafino at pserafino@bloomberg.net