Japanese Takeda to acquire Shire for $62bn
Japanese pharmaceutical company Takeda has agreed to acquire biotech company Shire for $62 billion.
Takeda announced the news today, May 8.
Takeda is the largest pharmaceutical in Japan. The company’s work centres on oncology, gastroenterology, and central nervous system disease. Takeda’s research and development also includes vaccines.
Shire focuses its research on discovering therapies for rare diseases, although the Irish company is well-known for its attention deficit hyperactivity disorder drug Adderall. Last month, Shire enjoyed victory when a US judge found that a proposed Abbreviated New Drug Application infringes claims of Shire’s Adderrall patents.
Shire had previously rejected four offers from Takeda, and the agreement has been made on the final day that the Japanese company would have been able to put in another bid. According to Reuters, previous offers were rejected due to price concerns and Takeda’s intention to pay for much of the acquisition in stock.
Last month Shire revealed that it had plans to sell its oncology business to France-based pharmaceutical company Servier for $2.4 billion.
For the deal between Takeda and Shire to proceed, 75% of Shire’s voting shareholders must support the transaction.
Since the beginning of 2018, there has been a flood of merger and acquisition activity.
In January, Celgene said it would acquire Juno Therapeutics for $9 billion, in a bid to discover and develop “transformative medicines for patients with incurable blood cancers”.
This was followed by Sanofi’s announcement that it would buy biotech firm Ablynx for approximately €3.9 billion ($4.8 billion).
Johnson & Johnson recently stated that it would sell LifeScan, its blood glucose monitoring unit, for $2.1 billion to a private investment firm.
Novartis shared its intention to acquire gene-therapy company AveXis for $8.7 billion last month, just after GSK revealed that it would buy Novartis out of their joint consumer healthcare business.
Last month Sanofi confirmed it was negotiating the sale of its European generics business for €1.9 billion, following which Procter & Gamble announced plans to buy the consumer health business of Merck KGaA for €3.4 billion.
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