MADRID, July 8 (Reuters) - The Grifols family and

Canadian fund Brookfield have agreed to launch a joint takeover

bid for Spanish drugmaker Grifols with the intent to

delist it, the companies said in regulatory filings on Monday.

Grifols said its board held an extraordinary meeting over

the weekend to study a preliminary offer presented by Brookfield

and the founding family, which has a nearly 30% stake.

They asked the board for access to certain company

information for due diligence before potentially buying all of

Grifols' shares, it said.

Shares in Grifols were suspended from trading on the

blue-chip index by regulator CNMV shortly before the

market opened.

Traders had expected the shares to rise between 8% and

10%. CNMV said the shares would resume trading at noon local

time (1000 GMT).

The founding family's aim was to gain access to the

company's books to make a final offer in the coming weeks,

business newspaper Cinco Dias reported on Sunday, adding that

Lazard ( LAZ ) was the sole financial advisor to both parties.

The deal could be worth around 5.5 billion euros ($5.96

billion), according to the report.

Brookfield said on Monday it had held exploratory talks

over a joint offer to delist Grifols from the Spanish stock

exchanges and the Nasdaq.

"There is no agreement or decision regarding a potential

transaction or the related terms and conditions," Brookfield

said, adding there was no guarantee that there would be a final

offer.

Grifols also said it did not know if a transaction will take

place and the terms in which it could be carried out.

Its main shareholders - after the descendants of three

brothers who took the company from a small family-owned lab in

Barcelona to a global player in the plasma derivatives business

- include the funds Capital, BlackRock ( BLK ), Europacific and Rokos

Global.

Since early January, short-seller fund Gotham City Research

has released several reports accusing Grifols of overstating

earnings and understating debt. Its market value has shed

several billion euros since then.

Following the reports, Grifols announced governance changes

and revised its reported leverage higher after market supervisor

CNMV required that it change its calculations.

Last week, Grifols appointed Rahul Srinivasan as chief

financial officer in a management reshuffle and Scranton

Enterprises, an entity tied to the Grifols family, reached an

agreement with a private investor to refinance 377 million euros

of debt in one of its units.

($1 = 0.9229 euros)

(Reporting by David Latona; Additional reporting by Marta

Serafinko; Editing by Louise Heavens and Arun Koyyur)