Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche has extended its tender offer for the outstanding shares of Philadelphia gene therapy company Spark Therapeutics to May 2.
The $114.50 per share tender offer was set to expire at the end of the day on April 3. About 11.3 million shares of Spark, which represents about 29 percent of Sparks’s outstanding shares, had been validly tendered and received prior to the extension.
Roche, which needs at least 50 percent of shares to be tendered to move forward with the acquisition, said Wednesday it is confident it will be able to complete the deal sometime in June. In February, Roche of Basel, Switzerland, entered into an agreement to acquire Spark, which was spun out of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in 2013, for $4.8 billion.
In connection with extending the tender offer, Roche has withdrawn its pre-merger notification and report form required under the federal government’s Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. Roche intends to refile the form, with the new tender offer expiration date, “on or about” April 10. The deal requires federal government approval. The companies are working with the government to have the review conducted “as expeditiously as possible,” Roche said.
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Spark, which has grown to 368 employees, earned the distinction of being the first company to receive Food and Drug Administration approval for a gene therapy to treat an inherited condition. In late 2017 the FDA granted marketing clearance to Luxturna, which is a one-time gene therapy treatment used for a genetic retinal disease that leads to blindness. Luxturna has also been approved in Europe,
Spark generated revenues of $64.7 million, which included $27 million in sales of Luxturna, last year.
Date: April 08, 2019
Source: Business Journal