Philip Mor­ris bags an­oth­er biotech as bid­ding war with Car­lyle over Vec­tura deal heats up

In one of the more un­like­ly bid­ding wars in re­cent bio­phar­ma mem­o­ry, a British to­bac­co gi­ant and a US pri­vate eq­ui­ty firm are com­pet­ing to pur­chase a UK drug­mak­er whose last ex­per­i­men­tal drug failed three years ago.

Overnight Mon­day both Philip Mor­ris and The Car­lyle Group raised their bids to buy out Vec­tura, a 24-year-old biotech that had last made head­lines in 2018, when its at­tempts to build an asth­ma drug fell apart in a large tri­al.

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