Dive Brief:
- In the latest salvo of the Teva-Mylan takeover drama, executives from the former company sent a letter to Mylan on Monday claiming that the rival generics firm is carrying out a "desperate attempt" to deter Teva's $40 billion takeover bid from being presented to shareholders.
- Teva executives insisted in the letter that the merger was an excellent opportunity for Mylan's shareholders, and that the firm would emerge victorious.
- Teva recently revealed that it owned a 1.35% stake in Mylan—far above the levels allowed under U.S. antitrust law. Mylan balked, but to no avail—Teva recently announced that it had further raised its stake to 2.2% and would even go all the way to 4.6% in order to force a legal showdown.
Dive Insight:
Teva claims that Mylan is not protected by U.S. antitrust regulations given the company's inversion merger which relocated its "principal" functions to the Netherlands. Teva's hope is to use that logic and a higher stake in order to force legal proceedings in Dutch court under which the company can present its takeover logic to shareholders.
Mylan, for its part, has claimed that Teva has been "meddling" without making a formal and binding offer. The company is pursuing its own takeover of yet another generics firm, Perrigo, ostensibly in the hopes of warding off Teva's unsolicited bid.
So far, the contentiousness has mostly been limited to written barbs. But at some point, it appears that this takeover drama is destined to go truly hostile, and the courts will likely get involved at some stage of the process. The only question at this point is, when?