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Philip Morris raises bid for respiratory drugmaker Vectura to £1.02Bn

Philip Morris raises bid for respiratory drugmaker Vectura to £1.02Bn

Renowned tobacco giant, Philip Morris, has reportedly announced that it has raised its initial bid to procure Vectura, a leading respiratory drugmaker to more than £1 billion. Vectura develops devices as well as inhaled medicines to treat a plethora of respiratory ailments such as asthma, counting enterprises such as GSK and Novartis among its customers.

According to reports, the maker of the infamous Marlboro cigarettes has increased its takeover offer to more than £1.65 ($2.29) per company share after Carlyle, a US-based private equity firm, offered more than £958m ($1.3bn) to it last week.

While Vectura has not put out an official statement regarding the new bid yet, it had previously stated that it was backing the offer made by Carlyle and effectively withdrawing the recommendation it made for Philip Morris' previous bid to its board.

The London-listed enterprise claimed last week that it believed the company can be much better positioned under the Carlyle ownership, rather than Philip Morris. It also noted the purported uncertainties pertaining to the impact on its wider stakeholders, coming as an outcome of the possibility that Vectura would be owned by Philip Morris, as one of the reasons.

Meanwhile, Vectura was also in the news recently over the announcement that it plans to develop a likely inhaled treatment for the novel coronavirus in collaboration with UK-based pharmaceuticals company, Inspira, which focuses on innovating therapies for both infectious and respiratory diseases.

In its official statement addressing the new bid, In a statement, Philip Morris stated that Philip Morris International raised offer values for the share capital of the drugmaker Vectura at more than £1.02 billion ($1.41bn).

The statement added that the company intends to run Vectura as an independent business unit which would make-up the backbone of the PMI’s inhaled therapeutics business.

For the record, the new offer represents a 10p per share premium to the rival bid of £1.55 per share made by the Carlyle Group.

Source credit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58140752

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