NEW YORK, Feb. 21 - DeCODE Genetics will likely acquire MediChem Life Sciences faster that it expected.
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On Thursday the companies said that the US Federal Trade Commission has ended the Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period ahead of time, meaning that the proposed merger is now expected to close in mid-March, several weeks before the firms originally expected the deal to close.
The transaction is still subject to a vote by MediChem stockholders, who are set to gather at a meeting on March 14.
As GenomeWeb reported, deCode in early January announced plans to acquire MediChem in a stock-swap deal valued at roughly $84 million. The deal is hoped to bolster the Icelandic population genomics company's chemistry and structural proteomics technology and to accelerate its progress toward in-house drug discovery and development.