Stub­born Acte­lion CEO Clozel spurs shift in buy­out talks, but J&J coun­ters with a raised bid -- re­ports

Acte­lion was nev­er go­ing to be an ea­ger part­ner in any takeover at­tempt. The Swiss biotech’s CEO, Jean-Paul Clozel, has stub­born­ly re­sist­ed ear­li­er at­tempts to force a change in own­er­ship. And now The Fi­nan­cial Times is re­port­ing that his stol­id at­ti­tude spurred J&J to start in­ves­ti­gat­ing a pos­si­ble tie-up rather than an out­right buy­out.

The FT team re­ports that Clozel was pre­dictably re­sis­tant to J&J’s over­ture to ac­quire the com­pa­ny, which boost­ed Acte­lion’s mar­ket cap to about $20 bil­lion. Its shares dropped, though, af­ter the FT’s re­port that J&J may pur­sue the more com­pli­cat­ed ap­proach of buy­ing in­to the com­pa­ny in a move that would still leave Acte­lion act­ing as an in­de­pen­dent en­ti­ty.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER