CV Therapeutics extends poison pill for another year
The board of directors at CV Therapeutics decided to extend by a year the shareholders rights plan they have in place to fend off hostile takeovers. The plan, otherwise known as a poison pill, was set to expire Sunday but will now be extended until Feb. 1, 2010.
The move comes the same week the Palo Alto company disclosed having turned down a $1 billion offer made back in November by Astellas Pharma. The move came after Japan’s second-largest drug maker renewed its effort to buy the maker of the chest-pain treatment drug, Ranexa.
The offer, which Astellas said it made Nov. 14, was to purchase CV Therapeutics stock for $16 a share, a 41 percent premium over CV Therapeutics’ stock price of $11.35 at the close of trading Monday. The premium was even higher in November when the offer was first made, when CT Therapeutics stocks were trading under $9.
In a filing Jan. 12, CV Therapeutics reported having paid down over $100 million in convertible debt 2008, through debt repurchases and exchanges, and said it expects to record over $100 million ofrom sales of Ranexa last year, and over $200 million of total revenues for 2009 from “including but not limited to” sales of Ranexa.
In July we posted about the approval given by European regulators giving the company the OK to market Ranexa in all 27 states of the European Union.
