Bristol-Myers Squibb has completed its $5-billion purchase of Amylin and its diabetes franchise, which means it can now move on to a planned marketing alliance with Anglo-Swedish drug giant AstraZeneca.
The NewYork-based drugmaker said it has now successfully completed its tender offer for all outstanding shares of Amylin’s common stock for $31.00 per share, giving it an initial 85% hold in the firm, and that it has exercised its right to snap up the remaining stock and finalise the merger.
And now for part two of the deal: AstraZeneca, which already has a major diabetes partnership with B-MS, will now pay $3.40 billion for 50% of the profits from Amylin’s drugs.
In addition, as per the agreement announced back in July, it also has the option of giving B-MS another $135 million “to establish equal governance rights over key strategic and financial decisions regarding the collaboration”.
Explaining his firm’s interest in the deal, Lamberto Andreotti, B-MS chief executive, said “Amylin’s innovative diabetes portfolio, talented people and state-of-the art manufacturing facility complement our long-standing leadership in metabolics”.
And Simon Lowth, interim chief executive at AstraZeneca, said the arrangement “is a compelling proposition that will have an immediate positive impact on revenues”, and that “the combined development, regulatory and commercial strengths” of the alliance “provides an excellent platform to unlock the potential of Amylin’s differentiated treatments”.
