The Shire bid Takeda’s been discussing is getting real.
The Japanese drugmakers is gauging creditors’ interest in providing loans that could help it make a bid that tops $40 billion, Reuters’ sources said. And Takeda will need some serious money; it’s looking for tens of billions of dollars’ worth of debt from multiple banks, the news service said, citing Kyodo News.
Among the potential creditors Takeda is consulting is its main bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp.
If Takeda wants to swallow Shire, it’s going to have to take a big bite. While industry watchers were initially skeptical the company could pull it off—especially after word that Takeda was weighing a transaction dragged down its shares and sent Shire’s soaring—analysts turned more positive last week after Takeda outlined just how much debt it was willing to take on.
“We think the deal is likely because there is willing buyer, willing sellers and room to meet both sides’ expectations,” Bernstein’s Wimal Kapada wrote to clients, adding that he sees a deal as “more likely than not.”
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking for Takeda, which could vault itself into the ranks of the world’s top drugmakers and beef up in the GI and neuroscience arenas if it can swing the Shire buy. Under U.K. takeover rules, the pharma has until April 25 to make a bid or walk away.
By Carly Helfnad
Source: Fierce Pharma
With a first to market advantage, Ferring’s Rebyota has seen early positive adoption from gastroenterologists and infectious disease specialist in the first month post-launch. As part of their Launch Dynamix™: C.diff service, Spherix reports, while new monthly initiations are modest, a majority of physicians trialing Rebyota report high satisfaction.
Global biopharmaceutical firm UCB has entered an early drug discovery collaboration with Aitia. The collaboration is aimed at discovering and validating new drug targets and drug candidates that are linked to clinical endpoints causally in Huntington’s disease, a debilitating genetic disorder.
Foundry Innovation & Research 1—known by its much catchier acronym, FIRE1—announced Wednesday the close of a $25 million financing round. It was led by a pair of new investors in the company: Andera Partners and Novo Holdings, the holding and investment company that serves as the controlling shareholder for Novo Nordisk and Novozymes.
