Drug giants fail to swallow Ariad Pharmaceuticals
As shares of UK pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline shed 9.5p to 1,614p and Shire declined 20p to 3,035p, dealers heard that both had lost out in the auction for Massachusetts-based Ariad Pharmaceuticals.
They were strongly tipped, along with Eli Lilly, to be willing to pay up to $20 a share for Ariad. The firm's treatment for leukemia – called Ponatinib – was given the green light by the Big Daddy of all regulators, the FDA.
Rumours from across the Pond now suggest that Jazz Pharmaceuticals, a dynamic pharmaceutical biopharma company, with a market capitalisation of $8billion, is willing to pay $20-plus a share to get its hands on Ariad, which was trading at $7.65 a share early yesterday and has jumped 18 per cent since January on bid speculation.
As soon as Ariad announced the commercial availability of Ponatinib for adult patients with refractory chronic myeloid leukemia, global pharmaceutical players were all over it.
They all want to enhance their positions in the crucial cancer treatment field and Ariad would be a perfect bolt-on.