LONDON â€" The Irish pharmaceutical firm Shire will pay $4.2 billion in cash to acquire ViroPharma, a Pennsylvania biopharmaceutical firm, in a move designed to bolster its roster of treatments for rare diseases, the companies said Monday.
Shire will acquire all of the outstanding shares of ViroPharma for $50 a share, representing a 27 percent premium on ViroPharma’s Friday closing price.
“The acquisition of ViroPharma will immediately benefit Shire and is entirely consistent with our clear strategic objective of strengthening our rare disease portfolio,†said Flemming Ornskov, Shire’s chief executive officer. “It brings us a new growth driving product which augments our already strong growth prospects.â€
ViroPharma’s products include Cinryze, a treatment for hereditary angioedema, a rare blood disorder. The firm had $428 million in net revenue last year, the bulk of it from Cinryze.
“By joining with Shire, ViroPharma will become part of a larger, more diverse biopharmaceutical company and will benefit from Shire’s innovation, scale and global reach,†said Vincent J. Milano, ViroPharma’s chairman and chief executive.
With the acquisition, Shire expects its rare disease business to post $2 billion in revenue in 2014 and to represent 40 percent of its revenue on a pro forma basis.
Pending anti-trust approval by regulators the deal is expected to close by the end of this year or in the first quarter of 2014.
Shire said it intends to terminate its share buyback program following the announcement.
Lazard and Morgan Stanley acted as financial advisers to Shire, while Goldman Sachs was ViroPharma’s financial adviser. Davis Polk & Wardwell was Shire’s legal adviser on the deal and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom was ViroPharma’s legal adviser.
