Major Chiron shareholder opposes Novartis deal
These guys are even more ungrateful than those ABGX diehards.
;-)
Doc
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -
Posted on Tue, Dec. 20, 2005
A major Chiron Corp. shareholder plans to vote against the company's proposed acquisition by Novartis AG, saying Tuesday that the offer price is too low.
ValueAct Capital, which said it owns 9.8 million shares, or 5 percent of Chiron, called Novartis' $45-per-share bid ``tantamount to stealing the company.''
``Thanks to its position on Chiron's board, Novartis had access to insider information which clearly indicated -- to them but to no other public shareholder -- that Chiron was worth far more than its depressed market price at the time of the initial Novartis offer,'' said G. Mason Morfit, a ValueAct partner.
In October, Novartis agreed to buy the remaining 56 percent of Chiron's stock it didn't already own, and touted the deal as a 23 percent price premium.
But ValueAct said it believes the fair value of Chiron's stock is substantially greater than $45, which was its price in early October 2004 before production problems led to the loss of its British license to produce the flu vaccine Fluvirin. Shares tumbled more than 30 percent to $30.76 following the news.
Citigroup Inc., ValueAct, Morgan Stanley, Barclays Bank and Paulson & Co. hold about 46 percent of Chiron shares not held by Novartis, ValueAct said in a statement.
John Gilardi, spokesman at Novartis' headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, declined to comment on the statement by ValueAct.
Shares of Chiron, based in Emeryville, Calif., fell 3 cents at $44.73 in morning trading on the Nasdaq. U.S. shares of Novartis fell 71 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $51.94 on the New York Stock Exchange.
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