BMS fires off $62 offer as it battles for ImClone

If Bristol-Myers Squibb can't charm its way to a merger deal with ImClone, the company seems more than happy to force its way to one. BMS upped its bid slightly to $62 a share--up from $60--and said it was readying a proxy fight for control of the cancer developer's board.

That $62 bid is 48 percent higher than ImClone's average stock price ahead of the offer. But ImClone Chairman Carl Icahn, no stranger to the hardest bargaining tactics on Wall Street, has made it clear that he wants more. Much more. Icahn recently claimed that a mystery pharma company had bid $70 for the biotech company and had begun a due diligence investigation of its books. BMS is now firing back, saying Icahn's maneuvering is damaging ImClone.

"These delays," says BMS, "combined with ImClone's lack of transparency, have created a protracted period of uncertainty among your stockholders, employees and other constituents which could hurt the intrinsic value of ImClone's assets."    

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