GAME General De Alquiler De Maquinaria

Talecris Biotherapeutics Holdings Corp.'s initial public offering of 50 million shares priced at $19 a share Wednesday, within the expected per-share price range of $18 to $20.

The $950 million IPO would be the second-largest this year, after last week's $1.04 billion offering by Shanda Games Ltd. (GAME).

Talecris, a biopharmaceutical company that first registered plans to go public in July 2007, was a part of German pharmaceutical company Bayer AG (BAYRY) before it was taken private by Cerberus Capital Management LP and Ampersand Ventures in 2005 for $304 million.

It is part of what bankers say will be a wave of private-equity backed deals tapping the markets in the months to come, now that the environment for IPOs has improved. Scheduled to start trading Friday is Education Management Corp., a former public company taken private for $3.4 billion in June 2006.

Last week was the busiest for IPOs in more than 18 months. The biggest splash was electric-car battery maker A123 Systems Inc., whose IPO on Nasdaq soared more than 50% on Thursday.

A third of the shares in the Talecris IPO are being sold by its private-equity owners and won't benefit the company; the remaining money raised will be used to pay down debt that was used to retire earlier loans and to pay a special dividend to its owners.

Talecris specializes in plasma-derived protein therapies for various diseases, including bleeding disorders and acute liver and kidney failure; its six largest products captured from 4% to 100% of the U.S. market share in their categories.

Its revenue, on a steady rise for years, increased 22% in the first half of 2009. Earnings jumped to $117 million from $19 million a year earlier.

Shares are expected to trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol TLCR.

-By Kathy Shwiff, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2357; Kathy.Shwiff@dowjones.com

(Lynn Cowan contributed to this report.)