Amylin dismisses BMS acquisition deal
pharmafile | March 30, 2012 | News story | Manufacturing and Production, Sales and Marketing | Amylin, BMS, Bydureon, diabetes, lilly
Amylin Pharmaceuticals has rebuffed a $3.5 billion unsolicited takeover bid from Bristol-Myers Squibb, according to reports.
Shares in Amylin rose on the news for the firm which manufactures diabetes drug Bydureon, a once-a-week injection available in the US and Europe.
Although both Amylin and BMS have been tight-lipped about the reports, Amylin needs money to successfully market Bydureon, a long-acting version of its older brand Byetta (exenatide).
Earlier this month, the company put 13 million shares up for sale in a bid to raise around $200 million. Amylin said it planned to use the proceeds “primarily for expenses related to its commercialisation of Bydureon”, as well as for ‘general corporate purposes’.
Analysts quoted by Bloomberg suggested that several other firms could be better placed than BMS to maximise the potential of Amylin’s medicines.
While BMS may not be about to make Amylin part of its ‘string of pearls’ acquisition strategy, other potential suitors bandied about include Sanofi, Merck and AstraZeneca.
Sanofi is already a big player: its diabetes franchise earned around $7.36 billion worldwide last year, behind only Novo Nordisk which had diabetes sales of $8.91 billion in 2011.
For AstraZeneca, the analysts’ logic is that buying Amylin could go some way to offsetting pipeline issues and upcoming patent cliffs.
One name not mentioned in any takeover talk is that of Eli Lilly. It launched Byetta with Amylin in 2005 but the former partners have since gone their separate ways in a less than amicable split.
In 2011 Amylin filed suit against Lilly after the latter partnered with Boehringer Ingelheim, another rival in the diabetes field, on their new diabetes pill Trajenta.
Last November Amylin announced it was to pay up to $1.6 billion to Lilly to end both its pact and any prospect of litigation in return for rights to the drug.
Adam Hill
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