GSK beat six oth­er com­pa­nies to the Sier­ra deal ta­ble and pre­vailed af­ter ini­tial $46 per share bid

With­in weeks of Sier­ra On­col­o­gy re­veal­ing it had tak­en a failed Gilead JAK in­hibitor and turned it in­to a Phase III suc­cess, Glax­o­SmithK­line swooped in for a piece of the po­ten­tial earn­ings, should the drug, mo­melo­tinib, re­ceive an FDA nod.

At first, the idea was a strate­gic part­ner­ship. But once GSK com­mer­cial chief Luke Miels was in­tro­duced to Sier­ra CEO Stephen Dil­ly, that changed.

Miels de­liv­ered a non-bind­ing ac­qui­si­tion pro­pos­al of $46 cash per share on March 8. The of­fer in­flat­ed to $51 per share three days lat­er, and even­tu­al­ly reached the fi­nal bid of $55 on April 2, ac­cord­ing to a back­ground of the even­tu­al merg­er agree­ment, re­vealed in a Mon­day SEC fil­ing.

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