Sanofi and Genzyme continue to drone on about making a deal. Henri Termeer was quoted in the WSJ today saying "Clearly, we will have conversations at the right moment...It can't go on forever."
Get on with it already. Apparently, Genzyme has been unable to entice either J&J, Merck or Pfizer to put in a competitive bid and no other bidders are apparent. The $69 price per share Sanofi offered is inadequae to the shareholder or otherwise more than 0.9% would have tendered their shares prior to the last deadline!
The two still can't agree on the value of Genzyme's MS drug, alemtuzumab, now to be branded Lemtrada for the MS market. Genzyme is sticking with their $3.5 B peak sales figure while Sanofi says it will be lucky to get to $700 M. The two companies are said to be haggling over putting CVR in the final agreement related to the drug. Genzyme shareholders would then receive more cash in the future if Lemtrada hits its sales milestones.
All this sounds like so much - blah, blah, blah. In the meantime, Genzyme's share price is holding steady at $69.65 per share for a market cap of about $18.1 B -- i.e. very close to the $18.5 B Sanofi hostile offer - the deadline of which has been extended to Jan 21st.
Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!
Posted by Bruce Lehr December 21st 2010.
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