Bristol-Myers Squibb to Buy Amylin for $7 Billion

Pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb ( IW1000/202) announced on June 29 that it will purchase diabetes drug maker Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. for about $7 billion.

Under the deal Bristol-Myers Squibb will pay $31 in cash per Amylin share and assume Amylin's debt and a contractual payment obligation totaling about $1.7 billion, the announcement said.

In addition, Bristol-Myers Squibb and another pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca (IW 100/119), announced that, following the completion of Bristol-Myers Squibb's acquisition of Amylin, the companies will enter into collaboration arrangements regarding the development and commercialization of Amylin's portfolio of products.

As part of this plan, AstraZeneca will make a payment to Amylin, as a wholly owned subsidiary of Bristol-Myers Squibb, in the amount of approximately $3.4 billion in cash. Profits and losses arising from the collaboration will be shared equally.

AstraZeneca will have the option to establish equal governance rights over key strategic and financial decisions regarding the collaboration, upon the payment to Bristol-Myers Squibb of an additional $135 million.

"Amylin's innovative diabetes portfolio, talented people and state-of-the art manufacturing facility complement our long-standing leadership in metabolics," said Lamberto Andreotti, CEO Bristol-Myers Squibb.

"We are pleased to be able to strengthen the portfolio we have built to help patients with diabetes by building on the success Amylin has had with its GLP-1 franchise."

Simon Lowth, interim chief executive officer of AstraZeneca, said that broadening diabetes collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb "is another important step towards creating a leadership position in the treatment of a disease with growing unmet medical need that is reaching epidemic proportions in many areas of the world."

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2012