Alnylam Pharmaceuticals announced this week that its partner Genzyme has exercised an option to buy 344,448 unregistered shares of Alnylam stock for $23 million as part of the companies broad genetic diseases alliance disclosed earlier this year.
In January, the companies announced that they had signed a deal under which Genzyme acquired the rights to Alnylam's existing and future genetic diseases medicines programs in territories outside of North America and Western Europe for the next six years.
In exchange, Genzyme purchased a 12 percent stake in Alnylam, buying about $700 million shares of newly issued stock at $80 apiece. Following Alnylam's issuance of stock to Merck in exchange for that company's RNAi assets, Genzyme was given the option to buy additional Alnylam stock in order to maintain its ownership percentage.
Genzyme exercised the option, buying the additional shares at $66.88 each, the closing price of Alnylam's stock at the time.