Ac­tivists threat­en to push for a sale of Alex­ion if ex­ecs can't jack up stock price

The stock price is climb­ing north for Alex­ion Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals $ALXN this morn­ing fol­low­ing news that ac­tivist in­vestors are pres­sur­ing the com­pa­ny to out­line plans for growth. If Alex­ion doesn’t de­liv­er, the board can ex­pect to see a push for a ma­jor shake­up — in­clud­ing calls for a po­ten­tial sale.

It’s El­liott Man­age­ment, a New York City hedge fund with $34 bil­lion un­der man­age­ment, that’s putting the squeeze on Alex­ion. The ac­tivist group wants to see ac­tion, from of­fer­ing more ag­gres­sive fi­nan­cial per­for­mance guid­ance to per­haps even sell­ing the com­pa­ny out­right. The or­der is to boost the share price by the end of the month, or it will be­gin a proxy fight for seats on the board.

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