NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Affymetrix today commenced its tender offer to repurchase the entire $95.5 million aggregate principal amount of its 3.5 percent Senior Convertible Notes Due 2038 currently outstanding.
As reported last week by GenomeWeb Daily News, Affymetrix is repurchasing the notes pursuant to a settlement with holders of the notes. The settlement pertains to a class action lawsuit brought against Affy by Tang Capital in December in the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara. The lawsuit alleged Affy's acquisition bid for eBioscience constituted a fundamental change under the indenture that governs the notes due in 2038.
Affy had previously said that it would need to restructure the financing commitments for the proposed acquisition of eBioscience, but in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission today the firm said that it has not yet reached any such agreements.
PerkinElmer's board of directors has declared a quarterly dividend of $.07 per share of common stock. The dividend is payable on May 11 to shareholders of record at the close of business on April 20.
Waters said this week that the Thomson Mass Spectrometry Laboratory at the University of Campinas' Institute of Chemistry will serve as a Waters Center of Innovation. The Brazilian lab is the first mass spec lab in Latin America to receive such a designation, Waters said in a statement.
KineMed said this week that it has entered into a non-exclusive research collaboration with Pfizer, under which the firms will use KineMed's Dynamic Proteomics platform to map the impact of potential drug candidates on specific metabolic pathways. In particular, the research is targeting type II diabetes.
The US Food and Drug Administration said this week that it and representatives of the medical device industry have reached an agreement on recommendations for a third reauthorization of a medical device user fee program. The recommendations would authorize FDA to collect $595 million in user fees over five years, plus adjustments for inflation. Details of the agreement will be finalized soon, said FDA.
In Brief This Week is a Friday column containing news items that our readers may have missed during the week.