NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) — Biosite today said it will start discussions with Inverness Medical Innovations about Inverness’s offer to buy the company for $90 a share.
Biosite said its board of directors and financial and legal advisors think Inverness’s offer “is reasonably likely to lead to a superior proposal” than the one it accepted from Beckman Coulter two weeks ago. Beckman late last month offered to buy the company for $85 a share, or around $1.55 billion.
In response, Beckman CEO Scott Garrett today said his company has waived a two-day period that Biosite agreed to before it could negotiate with other companies. Garrett said his company hopes to “resolve the uncertainty in the marketplace” the Inverness offer could generate.
Garrett also restated his view that Inverness’s offer is shaky due to its “conditional and uncertain terms,” and that it “should give the Biosite board and its stockholders enormous pause.”
Garrett also said he views Inverness’s “financing ‘commitments’” as containing “remarkably broad conditions and contingencies.”
Biosite said its board has not “withdrawn, qualified, modified, changed or amended” its recommendations to the company about the Beckman agreement, and said that for the time being that agreement “remains in effect.”
Yesterday, Inverness, which owns 5 percent of Biosite’s shares, expressed “dismay” that Biosite had not responded to its unsolicited offer to buy the remaining 95 percent of the company.