Roche makes another acquisition, paying $8.3 billion for InterMune

Announcing its fourth acquisition this year, Swiss pharma major Roche (ROG: SIX) said on Sunday that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement to fully acquire US biotech firm InterMune (Nasdaq: ITMN) at a price of $74.00 per share in an all-cash transaction.

This corresponds to a total transaction value of $8.3 billion on a fully diluted basis. This offer represents a premium of 38% to InterMune’s closing price on August 22, 2014 and a premium of 63% to InterMune’s unaffected closing price on August 12, before takeover speculation emerged.

The merger agreement has been approved by the boards of InterMune and Roche. The transaction, which is expected to close before year-end, is expected to be neutral to core earnings per share in 2015 and accretive from 2016 onwards.