The Car­lyle Group ax­es auc­tion by call­ing its $1.3B bid for Vec­tura 'fi­nal' — now the ball is in Philip Mor­ris' court

Philip Mor­ris has one fi­nal chance to show how se­ri­ous it is about ac­quir­ing Vec­tura.

Just a day af­ter re­ports sur­faced about an auc­tion that’s been set up to re­solve a bid­ding war be­tween the to­bac­co mak­er and The Car­lyle Group, the pri­vate eq­ui­ty firm stat­ed that its most re­cent of­fer — £958 mil­lion, or $1.3 bil­lion — is fi­nal. That means it won’t get in­volved in the planned auc­tion or go above what it con­clud­ed is a “full and fair” price for Vec­tura, which flopped as a drug de­vel­op­er but flour­ished af­ter piv­ot­ing in­to for­mu­lat­ing in­haled drugs for clients.

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