Takeda Pharmaceutical Co sweetened its offer for drugmaker Shire PLC to more than US$60 billion after three prior bids were rejected, wooing investors in the US company with a higher cash component.
The Japanese company boosted its offer to £47 a share from £46.5 a share for the Lexington, Massachusetts-based Shire.
The new proposal includes £21 a share in cash and £26 a share in new stock.
Shire said in a statement that its board of directors “is considering its position with respect to the fourth proposal and will issue a further announcement in due course.”
The new bid lifts the cash component to about 45 from 38 percent, in an effort to win over shareholders who might be reluctant to receive stock in Takeda, a smaller company than Shire.
Takeda said it would enable Shire investors to continue to hold shares in the combined company via US depositary receipts on the New York Stock Exchange.
“Takeda believes that the improved proposal represents a highly compelling opportunity for Shire shareholders, which reflects a further increase in value and a material increase in the cash component of the consideration mix,” Takeda said in a statement on Friday.
Shire on Thursday rejected Takeda’s previous proposal, and said that the terms “significantly undervalue the company and Shire’s growth prospects and pipeline,” but left the door open for further negotiations.
A completed deal would be the biggest by a Japanese company of an overseas target and the combined revenue would place Takeda among the top 10 global pharmaceutical giants.
Overall, the offer represents a premium of 7 percent to an initial bid made last month, worth £44 a share, Takeda said.
It is also 53 percent above Shire’s share price before Takeda officially disclosed its interest in a deal.
Shares of London-listed Shire on Friday closed down 3.9 percent to £38.21.
Takeda, which is based in Osaka, said it would maintain its headquarters in Japan and a primary listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to