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On its face, the offer from Icahn (who owns 4% of the company)—an 18% premium over the previous day's trading price—is hardly out of line. London-based AstraZeneca in April agreed to pay $15.2 billion, a 21% premium, for MedImmune, of Gaithersburg, Maryland, and 3 years ago Basel, Switzerland–based Novartis paid about $5.1 billion, a 23% premium, for the shares it didn't already own of Emeryville, California–based Chiron.
Although Christopher Raymond, an analyst with Robert Baird & Co. in Chicago, says that he “didn't see [the MedImmune buyout] coming, and I don't think anyone else did, either,” he adds that Biogen Idec “has a lot more going for it,” with a decent pipeline, albeit mostly early stage, and infrastructure in Europe and Japan. Both might be of interest to New York–based Pfizer, the buyer candidate most often mentioned (Box 1 and Table 1). Pfizer is not saying much in response, with CEO Jeff Kindler mentioning during a third-quarter earnings conference call only that his company “will always keep our eyes and ears open to any means to build our business”—a remark that did little to quell speculation. During Biogen Idec's earnings call, analyst Maged Shenouda of UBS Securities in New York asked CEO James Mullen if he would outline his talks with Icahn since the offer was made public. Mullen's complete response: “No.”