Deborah Dunsire, Lundbeck

Lund­beck’s Deb­o­rah Dun­sire didn’t just want an ex-US deal for Alder’s mi­graine drug. She want­ed the whole world

Lit­tle Alder had no prob­lem lin­ing up 10 drug com­pa­nies in­ter­est­ed in bid­ding for the ex-US rights to its CGRP mi­graine drug — the last place fin­ish­er among 4 ri­vals look­ing to carve out a piece of the mar­ket for a new stan­dard of care in the field. But on­ly one want­ed to go one big step fur­ther and buy the com­pa­ny, bag­ging eptinezum­ab whole in a $2 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion.

Alder’s ex­ecs had made no se­cret of the fact that they want­ed to sign up a part­ner for their drug. And ac­cord­ing to their lat­est SEC fil­ing, by the end of March they had 5 term sheets in hand — in­clud­ing one from Lund­beck that proved the most com­pelling. Like the rest, Lund­beck had signed a stand­still pro­vi­sion in launch­ing the bid­ding process and ex­e­cut­ing a non-dis­clo­sure pact. But on March 6 Lund­beck CEO Deb­o­rah Dun­sire brought up the idea of a strate­gic deal in an un­re­lat­ed meet­ing with Alder board mem­ber Clay Sie­gall, the high-pro­file CEO at Seat­tle Ge­net­ics.

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