Takeda to buy US company
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co, Japan's largest drugmaker, agreed to buy Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc for $8.8 billion, gaining a blood-cancer medicine before the patent on its best-selling Actos diabetes pill expires in 2011.
Stockholders of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Millennium will receive $25 a share in cash, 53 percent more than Wednesday's closing price, the two companies said in a statement yesterday. It is Japan's largest drug acquisition.
Millennium's cancer treatment Velcade widens the product pipeline Osaka-based Takeda is developing to buffer sales once Actos faces generic competition. Rival Eisai Co agreed in December to buy US drugmaker MGI Pharma Inc for $3.9 billion to gain more cancer medicines.
"This deal will boost Takeda's drug-development flow," said Mitsuo Ohmi, a Tokyo-based analyst at Japan Advisory LLC. "Millennium is a leader in genome medicine, with some promising drugs in early development."
The US company generated $265 million in sales last year from Velcade, which is sold in more than 80 countries. Overall revenue climbed 8 percent to $528 million. Millennium earned $14.9 million in net income, its first profit since 1998.
Takeda fell 2.5 percent to 5,410 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange before the announcement. Millennium gained 41 percent in the past year. The takeover premium is more than double the 23 percent Tokyo-based Eisai paid to acquire MGI Pharma.
Japanese drugmakers are expanding outside the world's second-largest drug market because domestic growth is hamstrung by a government policy to cut prescription-medicine prices every two years.
Agencies
(China Daily 04/11/2008 page16)
