How Take­da won a $5.2B bid­ding war — against it­self

In the end, Take­da CEO Christophe We­ber was bid­ding against him­self in the ne­go­ti­a­tions to ac­quire Ari­ad $ARIA.

In an SEC fil­ing post­ed to­day Ari­ad spelled out the back and forth that oc­curred be­tween the biotech and its phar­ma buy­er. Start­ing at $20 a share, Take­da had no prob­lem get­ting the at­ten­tion of the board at Ari­ad. But Ari­ad’s board nev­er man­aged to get any new bid­der to the ta­ble, shrugged off by the three com­pa­nies the board felt were the most like­ly to make an auc­tion re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing.

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