Af­ter promis­ing M&A and buy­backs to re­vive long-term prospects, Bio­gen re­fresh­es board with three ap­point­ments to en­thuse in­vestors

Bruised by the ti­tan­ic fail­ure of its Alzheimer’s drug ad­u­canum­ab and ahead of gene ther­a­py com­pe­ti­tion for its flag­ship SMA treat­ment Spin­raza, Bio­gen is for­ti­fy­ing its board with three new ap­point­ments to pla­cate its in­creas­ing­ly dis­en­chant­ed share­hold­er base that has seen the US drug­mak­er cul­ti­vate its pipeline around the now aban­doned ad­u­canum­ab.

Last Wednes­day, com­pa­ny ex­ec­u­tives at­tempt­ed to put a Band-Aid on the burn by telling an­a­lysts in a post-earn­ings con­fer­ence call that they felt an “oblig­a­tion to re­bound” and in­tend­ed to do so by en­gag­ing in M&A and buy­ing back shares with the $42 bil­lion they have in the bank, over the next five years.

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