In a formal announcement, Elan Pharmaceuticals said on Friday that it would be commencing a formal sale process due to the number of interested bids it had received to date.
One of the participants to Elan's sale would be Royalty Pharma, who has made bid worth nearly US$8 billion for the pharmaceutical firm. The invitation would be provided to Elan and would accept their participation should the company so wish to do so.
Elan, through a statement, had urged its shareholders not to accept the most recent tendered offer by Royalty Pharma.
In another development, US conglomerate Johnson & Johnson had sold off its 25,4 million shares in Elan. With the divestment, J&J effectively ends the four year partnership between the Dublin, Ireland based Elan and the New Jersey, NJ based Johnson & Johnson. The shares were sold back to Elan back in April and the remaining 25.4 million were sold for a total of US$332.5 million.
The shareholdings of Johnson & Johnson were obtained back in 2009 for a whopping US$1 billion. The medical conglomerate had taken over the development of a new Alzheimer's disease drug but the drug failed in its clinical testing.
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