Bristol-Myers and Starboard Value spar over $74B Celgene buyout as shareholder vote looms

March 19, 2019 10:24 AM EDT

Bristol-Myers and Starboard Value spar over $74B Celgene buyout as shareholder vote looms

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Bristol-Myers Squibb execs and Starboard Value are back at it today, exchanging broadsides for and against the $74 billion buyout.

There’s not much fresh material to pick over at this point. Bristol-Myers CEO Giovanni Caforio has been trying to bat back every criticism that Starboard and its allies have raised.

Image: Giovanni Caforio. AP IMAGES

Depending on who you listen to here, Bristol-Myers either:

— Carefully selected Celgene from among 20 promising finalists for a takeover, completing a compelling deal that will prove transformative in the near term with a slate of late-stage drugs headed to a likely approval and blockbuster status.

— Presented their investors with a monster patent cliff for a lead drug that will soon start facing generic competition, creating a make or break situation in which Bristol-Myers stock could be blighted.

— It would be better for Bristol-Myers to go it alone or even find a buyer.

— There is no buyer.

— Vote for on April 12.

— Vote against on April 12.

Jefferies’ Michael Yee is one of several analysts who think this deal will get done, despite the criticism. In most major deals like this, where the execs at the buying side are dug in, the deal gets done. Starboard itself doesn’t control enough votes to stop it, by a long shot. But after Bristol’s biggest investor Wellington went rogue and came out against the deal, the odds began to change. And seeing influential groups like the Loncar fund detail their objections, the unthinkable became possible.

It’s just not probable, yet.

AUTHOR

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

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Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk gestures to the audience after being recognized by President Trump following the successful launch of a Falcon 9 rocket at the Kennedy Space Center. (via Getty Images)

July 2, 2020 06:30 AM EDTUpdated 10:07 AM

People

Coronavirus

Tesla chief Elon Musk teams up with Covid-19 player CureVac to build 'RNA microfactories'

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Elon Musk has joined the global tech crusade now underway to revolutionize vaccine manufacturing — now aimed at delivering billions of doses of a new mRNA vaccine to fight Covid-19. And he’s cutting right to the front.

In a late-night tweet Wednesday, the Tesla chief announced:

Tesla, as a side project, is building RNA microfactories for CureVac & possibly others.

That’s not a lot to go on. But the tweet comes a year after Tesla’s German division in Grohmann and CureVac filed a patent on a “bioreactor for RNA in vitro transcription, a method for RNA in vitro transcription, a module for transcribing DNA into RNA and an automated apparatus for RNA manufacturing.” CureVac, in the meantime, has discussed a variety of plans to build microfactories that can speed up the whole process for a global supply chain.

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George Yancopoulos (Regeneron)

July 1, 2020 08:28 AM EDTUpdated 13 hours ago

People

UPDATED: Regeneron co-founder George Yancopoulos offers a combative defense of the police at a high school commencement. It didn’t go well

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Typically, the commencement speech at Yorktown Central School District in Westchester — like most high schools — is an opportunity to encourage students to face the future with confidence and hope. Regeneron president and co-founder George Yancopoulos, though, went a different route.

In a fiery speech, the outspoken billionaire defended the police against the “prejudice and bias against law enforcement” that has erupted around the country in street protests from coast to coast. And for many who attended the commencement, Yancopoulos struck the wrong note at the wrong time, especially when he combatively challenged someone for interrupting his speech with a honk for “another act of cowardness.”

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Elias Zerhouni (Photo by Vincent Isore/IP3/Getty Images)

June 30, 2020 09:39 AM EDT

People

R&D

Pharma

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Editor & Founder

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Rather than interpret them, I thought it would be best to provide snippets straight from the interview.

On the Trump administration response:

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June 29, 2020 05:59 AM EDTUpdated 10:34 AM

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Editor & Founder

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The incidents are derailing plans to file for a near-term approval, which had been expected right about now.

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July 1, 2020 06:37 AM EDTUpdated July 2, 02:40 AM

Deals

R&D

Pharma

An experienced biotech is stitched together from transpacific parts, with 265 staffers and a focus on ‘new biology’

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Editor & Founder

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July 2, 2020 10:37 AM EDTUpdated 11:00 AM

China

Looking for 'external innovation,' Boehringer Ingelheim reserves $500M+ for new Shanghai hub

Amber Tong

Editor

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Vas Narasimhan, Novartis CEO (Patrick Straub/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

July 2, 2020 10:31 AM EDTUpdated 11:26 AM

Pharma

Novartis pays $678M for kickback scheme as Vas Narasimhan tries to distance pharma giant from shady behavior

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Associate Editor

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The top-shelf alcohol and lavish meals included a $3,250 per person night at Nobu in Dallas, a $672-per person dinner at Washington DC’s Smith & Wollensky and a $314 per person meal at Sushi Roku in Pasadena, according to the Justice Department complaint. There were at least 7 trips to Hooters and fishing trips in Alaska and off the Florida coast. Each of these events were supposed to be “speaker programs” where doctors educated other doctors on a drug, but the DOJ alleged many were “bogus” wine-and-dine events where the drug was barely mentioned, if at all. (“Nobody presented slides on the fishing trips,” the complaint says.)

ENDPOINTS CAREERS

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Caribou Biosciences, Inc.

Berkeley, CA

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July 2, 2020 08:48 AM EDT

Peer Review

Novavax snags Ben Machielse for CMC and promotes a trio of staffers; Marty Duvall lands another CEO post at Oncopeptides

Alex Hoffman

Assistant Editor

Kathy Wong

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Dan Gold, MEI Pharma CEO

July 2, 2020 08:30 AM EDT

R&D

Development partners at MEI, Helsinn dump a high-risk PhIII AML study after concluding it would fail survival goal

John Carroll

Editor & Founder

Four years after Switzerland’s Helsinn put $25 million of cash on the table for an upfront and near-term milestone to take MEI Pharma’s drug pracinostat into a long-running Phase III trial for acute myeloid leukemia, the partners are walking away from a clinical pileup.

The drug — an HDAC inhibitor — failed to pass muster during a futility analysis, as researchers concluded that pracinostat combined with azacitidine wasn’t going to outperform the control group in the pivotal.