Another Fen biotech is swallowed as Acambis Board gives the nod to Sanofi Pastuer’s £276m takeover offer
A year after it installed a new management team, Cambridge-based vaccine maker Acambis plc has attracted a takeover offer at a 65% premium to its share price that the Board has decided is too good to refuse.
Sanofi Pasteur has offered to buy the company for around £276m, and the Acambis Board has recommended shareholders accept it.
The stock market bid Acambis' share price up 60%, taking market capitalisation to just short of % £270m, and indicating the market believes this is a done deal.
Acambis is another in the long line of promising Cambridge-bred biotechs that have been absorbed by the pharma giants. It's a strong endorsement of the quality of research and commercial potential of Silicon Fen's biotech industry and, given the nature of the pharmaceutical industry, has a ring of inevitability about it, but it's frustrating that the region cannot sneak a standalone player through to the big league.
Silicon Fen's Big Three - Autonomy, ARM Holdings and AVEVA - are all in the IT sector.
Sanofi Pasteur and Acambis have had a decade long commercial relationship and partnership agreements relating to three of Acambis' five key vaccine development programs.
The acquisition will combine Acambis' pipeline of innovative infectious disease vaccines, proven vaccine development expertise and US-based manufacturing smallpox vaccine operations with Sanofi Pasteur's financial strength and worldwide vaccine commercialisation infrastructure.
Sanofi Pasteur President and CEO Wayne Pisano said the acquisition was "a logical step building upon Sanofi Pasteur and Acambis' decade long partnership on key projects to develop and market vaccines of the future."
Acambis Chairman Peter Fellner said: "Since Acambis appointed its new management team in early 2007, the company has made a series of important advances, both in progressing its pipeline of innovative vaccines through the clinic and in securing its mid-term financial position.
"Sanofi Pasteur, one of the world's largest vaccines companies, will benefit strategically not only from Acambis' pipeline and technologies, but also from its significant US-based R&D and manufacturing infrastructure."
Acambis' product portfolio includes: a licensed smallpox vaccine, ACAM2000, for which it has a contract with the US government; three late- and mid-stage programmes partnered with Sanofi Pasteur for the development and commercialisation of vaccines against Japanese Encephalitis, dengue and West Nile virus; and early-stage proprietary programmes targeting potentially significant markets in the fields of C. difficile, influenza and genital herpes.
Sanofi said it had received acceptances from shareholders holding 42% of Acambis' stock.
