Abbott Labs bids $722 for Facet to enhances its biotech R&D pipeline, including daclizumab

US health care major Abbott Laboratories has signed a definitive agreement for Abbott to acquire Facet Biotech, enhancing Abbott's early- and mid-stage pharmaceutical pipeline. Abbott will acquire Facet for $27 per share (a 67% premium) in cash for a net transaction value of approximately $450 million, which includes a purchase price of around $722 million less Facet's projected cash and marketable securities at closing of approximately $272 million.

Facet last year turned down an unsolicited bid from Biogen Idec, its development partner for one of its lead compounds, daclizumab, saying - after three-months of hostilities over the value of the firm - that the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company's $17.50-a-share offer was 'inadequate' (The Pharma Letter December 18, 2009). Facet's shares soared 67% to $27.08 in after-hours trading last night.

Though not in the mega league of last year's Pfizer/Wyeth and Merck & Co/Schering-Plough deals, Abbott has been a canny buyer of late. It spent $10 billion on new acquisitions last year, paying$3 billion for Advanced Medical Optics and $6.6 billion for the prescription drug business of Belgium's Solvay (TPLs passim).