MILAN, April 1 (Reuters) - Italian drugmaker Angelini

Pharma is keen on M&A, even after its offer to buy bigger rival

Recordati fell through despite having the support of

potential financial partners, its Chief Executive Sergio Marullo

di Condojanni said on Tuesday

Media speculation over Recordati's future rose in the second

half of last year, after majority shareholder CVC Capital

Partners hired investment banks JP Morgan and Goldman

Sachs ( GS ) to explore options for the drugmaker.

Some reports named Angelini Pharma as a potential buyer of

CVC's 51.8% stake in Recordati, but the private equity firm in

January said had not had talks with Angelini's managers or

shareholders and did not foresee any.

"It would have been a very big operation for us, as

Recordati has a market cap of over 10 billion euros ($10.78

billion). There was a lot of interest from financial partners

with whom we could have bought a controlling stake," Marullo di

Condojanni said on the sidelines of conference in Milan.

From Angelini's point of view, the offer was "very

convincing," he said. "Perhaps we could have let it go earlier

but we were very persistent," he added.

Marullo di Condojanni said his group was still interested in

M&A deals both abroad and Italy, where he said small,

profitable players had no incentive to grow, leading to a lack

of companies of sufficient scale to invest in innovation.($1 =

0.9273 euros)

(Reporting by Elvira Pollina; Writing by Gianluca Semeraro;

Editing by Barbara Lewis and Valentina Za)