Hervé Gis­serot

It took a cou­ple of ex­tra months to get all the reg­u­la­to­ry sign-offs, but CSL says to­day it’s lined up all the nec­es­sary ap­provals to get its $11.7 bil­lion Vi­for buy­out done.

An­nounced 11 days be­fore last Christ­mas, the big Aus­tralian play­er ex­pects to have 97% of Vi­for’s shares when it clos­es the ac­qui­si­tion on Aug. 9.

Paul McKen­zie

Once the M&A deal is com­plete, cur­rent Vi­for com­mer­cial chief Hervé Gis­serot will move up to the gen­er­al man­ag­er’s role at the sub and re­port to CSL COO Paul McKen­zie.

An­a­lysts tend to get jit­tery around every deal, par­tic­u­lar­ly a siz­able one like this, which wed the gi­ant blood plas­ma out­fit CSL — which has been ag­gres­sive­ly beef­ing up its ops — with a com­pa­ny en­gaged in iron de­fi­cien­cy, nephrol­o­gy and car­dio-re­nal con­di­tions. The FTC has been co­or­di­nat­ing with Eu­ro­pean reg­u­la­tors and oth­ers who may frown on big ac­qui­si­tions, send­ing some clear sig­nals that it will pounce when need­ed. But as CSL has not­ed sev­er­al times, snags in com­plet­ing M&A are not un­usu­al.

Get­ting a green light from the FTA and Eu­ro­pean reg­u­la­tors, though, may just ex­change one set of reg­u­la­to­ry headaches for an­oth­er. Just weeks ago the EC opened a for­mal in­ves­ti­ga­tion of Vi­for for an­ti­com­pet­i­tive moves against a ri­val, Phar­ma­cos­mos, and its iron de­fi­cien­cy treat­ment Monofer.

CSL CEO Paul Per­reault, though, is all in and of­fered an en­thu­si­as­tic thumbs-up on to­day’s news:

Join­ing CSL, the Vi­for busi­ness adds near-term val­ue along with a clear path to long-term sus­tain­able growth. It al­so adds an out­stand­ing man­age­ment team, along with a high-val­ue and com­ple­men­tary port­fo­lio of prod­ucts and mar­ket lead­ing po­si­tion in the nephrol­o­gy and iron de­fi­cien­cy spaces.

Ab­bas Hus­sain

“I am full of con­fi­dence that Vi­for Phar­ma will have a suc­cess­ful fu­ture as part of a larg­er, glob­al or­ga­ni­za­tion,” of­fered Vi­for CEO Ab­bas Hus­sain in a state­ment. “This will al­low us to ac­cel­er­ate growth and to suc­cess­ful­ly dri­ve mul­ti­ple prod­uct launch­es as we con­tin­ue to help even more pa­tients around the world live bet­ter, health­i­er lives.”

Rising monkeypox cases have put the US on high alert as it announces a national health emergency, which grants the government more power in its response.

The news comes as Bavarian Nordic continues to fill orders for its Jynneos vaccine and other companies – including Moderna – consider jumping into the vaccine race. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the US has allowed around 20 million doses of smallpox vaccine in its stockpile to expire.

Forget buyer’s remorse, Pfizer is likely feeling pretty good about its $11.6 billion Biohaven takeover deal following reports of a 57% sales boost for migraine med Nurtec.

Biohaven reported in Q2 results on Friday that it’s cleared the necessary antitrust hurdles to move forward with the sale of its calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) assets to Pfizer. However, because the company is “focused on workstreams related to the closing” of the deal, it did not host a call with analysts and investors.