Dive Brief:
- Shire announced on Tuesday that it has made an all-stock, $30 billion offer to acquire new Baxter spinoff Baxalta at $45.23 per share, or a 36% premium over the firm's cloasing price on Monday.
- Shire's offer for Baxalta may not be enough to bring a deal to fruition with Baxalta, which has a poison-pill clause at its disposal, as well as challenging board policies.
- In response to Shire's offer, Baxalta argues that the bid significantly undervalues the company.
Dive Insight:
Shire's CEO Flemming Ornskov is determined to turn his company into a rare diseases leviathan, and achieve target financial goals of $10 billion in annual sales by 2020. The strategic underpinnings of this goal are driven by both organic growth and acquisitions, including the acquistion of NPS in February and the acquisition of Foresight Therapeutics earlier this week for $300 million.
Baxalta's most important contribution to Shire's portfolio would be the addition of its hemophilia durgs, Feiba and Advate, as well as its pipeline hemophilia monoclonal antibody drug and its gene therapy platform. Despite competitive dynamics in the market involving potential competition from Roche, Baxalta's programs have the potential to really take off. For this reason, and others, Baxalta would like to see a stronger offer from Shire---an offer it may or may not choose to take, considering the company only launched in July.
At this point, the ball is in Ornskov's court.