Reuters: Regulatory News: UPDATE 2-Royalty Pharma gets May deadline to firm up Elan offer

Reuters: Regulatory News Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

UPDATE 2-Royalty Pharma gets May deadline to firm up Elan offer Apr 3rd 2013, 13:35 Wed Apr 3, 2013 8:10am EDT * Elan welcomes Irish Takeover Panel deadline for bid * Royalty's $6.6 bln approach would scupper Elan's M&A plans * Elan ready to move after Tysabri deal closes DUBLIN, April 3 (Reuters) - U.S. investment firm Royalty Pharma, which is considering a $6.6-billion bid for Irish drugmaker Elan, must make a firm offer by May 10 or walk away, Ireland's Takeover Panel said on Wednesday. Royalty made its indicative approach, worth $11 per Elan share, in February, hoping to add hundreds of millions of dollars of royalty rights for multiple sclerosis (MS) drug Tysabri to its stable of royalty streams. Elan has rejected the proposal and welcomed the takeover panel's deadline, reiterating the "highly conditional indication of interest" from Royalty was opportunistic in its timing. The takeover panel said it had set the deadline following representations made by Elan and correspondence with the advisers to both Royalty and Elan. The approach by New York-based Royalty put into question Elan's plans to return cash to investors and spend on acquisitions following the $3.25 billion sale of its 50 percent stake in Tysabri to partner Biogen Idec. Elan, left with only experimental drugs following the deal, will retain royalties of up to 25 percent on future sales of the MS treatment and announced last month it would give shareholders one-fifth of that royalty share. The Tysabri deal closed on Tuesday. The Dublin-based company, in which U.S. group Johnson & Johnson is an 18 percent shareholder, will next seek approval from shareholders to start a share buyback and hand back $1 billion to investors. Royalty was due to meet with 10 to 15 of Elan's largest shareholders, including Johnson & Johnson, ahead of the April 12 shareholder meeting. Elan claims most of its shareholders did not view Royalty's idea as worth consideration. Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions