The UK’s CeNes Pharmaceuticals has agreed to a takeover by Germany’s Paion AG in an all-share transaction that is valued at £10.9 million.
A deal of this type has been on the cards since February when CeNeS said it is “in discussions which may or may not lead to an offer for the company”. The firm’s share price has struggled over the last year as investors have become increasingly impatient about CeNeS’ inability to get a licensing partner for its lead product, M6G (morphine-6-glucuronide) for post-operative pain.
A lack of any concrete deal has reduced CeNeS’ value considerably which has created a vicious circle that has reduced its bargaining power and the firm has also just published its preliminary financial results for 2007 which show that it had cash at the end of the year of just £4.3 million.
The Paion agreement values each CeNeS share at 48.9p, a near-53% premium on the UK firm’s closing price on February 4 and each stockholder will receive 0.3521 Paion shares for every CeNeS share they hold. The combined group should have a combined cash balance of 49 million euros.
Source: PharmaTimes
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