Four of­fers and a call from Bourla: How Pfiz­er nar­row­ly beat out ri­val bid­der to swal­low GBT and its sick­le cell drugs for $5.4B

Pfiz­er wasn’t the first — or on­ly — com­pa­ny that want­ed to buy Glob­al Blood Ther­a­peu­tics.

In fact, Pfiz­er el­bowed a ri­val bid­der through­out two months of in­tense ne­go­ti­a­tions al­most right down to the last minute, ac­cord­ing to de­tails re­vealed in a new SEC fil­ing. “Com­pa­ny A,” which start­ed the buy­out talks, to be­gin with, was still in the game when Bloomberg broke the news in ear­ly Au­gust that GBT was draw­ing takeover in­ter­est; “Com­pa­ny B” dropped out slight­ly ear­li­er.

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