Astellas drops bid for CV Therapeutics

There won't be any bidding war for CV Therapeutics. Japan's Astellas Pharma says it won't challenge Gilead Sciences' $1.4 billion offer for CV, which at $20 a share came in $4 over Astellas' bid. And Astellas says it will also drop its court case against CV, which had targeted the California-based drug developer's anti-takeover methods.

Astellas had moved aggressively to grab CV, hoping to add revenue from the chronic angina drug Ranexa and Lexiscan, which is used to detect coronary artery disease. Japanese drug companies like Takeda and Eisai have been buying U.S. companies to help diversify their product portfolios outside of the stunted Japanese market. And Astellas needs to find new revenue to replace the money it will lose after existing drugs lose patent protection.  

Astellas had so much to gain from a merger with CV that some analysts were almost certain that the Japanese company would jump into a bidding war. Joseph Schwartz, an analyst at Leerink, said late last week that he believed Astellas would raise its price to $22 to $24 a share. 

- read the report from the Wall Street Journal

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