Here’s the inside account of Gilead's 11-week sprint to its $12B Kite buyout
What started as a casual dalliance between executives at Gilead and Kite in 2015 marked by some occasional flirtation over head-turning technology turned serious early this year, probably at JP Morgan, as two top dealmakers — Gilead’s Andrew Dickinson and Kite’s Helen Kim — decided to see if they should get serious about a union of the two biotechs.
By mid-June the two CEOs, John Milligan and Arie Belldegrun, got into the act. And over the next 11 weeks the overture turned passionate enough for Milligan and Gilead to up their initial offer by about $5 billion.
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