Bid­ding war erupts for Shire as Take­da is stiff-armed on a $62.5B of­fer and Al­ler­gan jumps in

A bid­ding war for Shire $SH­PG has erupt­ed.

Shire has re­ject­ed three sep­a­rate bids from Take­da in re­cent weeks, in­clud­ing a third of­fer valu­ing the com­pa­ny at $62.5 bil­lion. And right on the heels of a state­ment from Shire, Al­ler­gan an­nounced it is now get­ting in­to the act and start­ing takeover talks with Shire.

Al­ler­gan $AGN CEO Brent Saun­ders — a top deal­mak­er in bio­phar­ma — ev­i­dent­ly wants to see if he can pull off the kind of ma­jor M&A move that would trans­form his com­pa­ny as well. Meet­ing the rules of a UK-re­lat­ed takeover, Al­ler­gan says it has made no of­fer but will have to de­clare its in­ten­tions by May 17.

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