By Deena Beasley
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co
Bristol-Myers, which valued its new offer at around $4.7 billion, said it plans a cash tender for ImClone shares.
Eric Schmidt, an analyst at Cowen & Co, said the higher offer is unlikely to succeed. "I suspect ImClone (Chairman Carl Icahn) is unlikely to agree to $62 and Bristol's persistence would give him leverage in holding out longer," the analyst said in an e-mailed statement.
Bristol's July 31 offer of $60 a share was rejected by ImClone, which said earlier this month it had received a higher, but still preliminary, $70 per-share takeover proposal from an unnamed pharmaceutical company.
"Clearly Bristol is very interested in acquiring ImClone and won't be walking away any time soon," Schmidt said. "Of course there is still a possibility of a third party coming in significantly higher."
Bristol-Myers has had a long partnership with ImClone, since it markets the biotech group's cancer drug Erbitux in the United States and receives about 61 percent of the product's North American revenue. It already owns 17 percent of ImClone.
In a letter to Icahn, Bristol-Myers' Chief Executive James Cornelius said ImClone's actions "have created a protracted period of uncertainty among your stockholders, employees and other constituents which could hurt the intrinsic value of ImClone's assets."
The company said its latest offer represents a 48 percent premium to ImClone's average share price in the three months leading up to its initial takeover offer.
Bristol-Myers also said it plans to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission a bid to remove all existing members of ImClone's board and replace them with its own candidates.
Shares of ImClone, which closed at $59.40 on Nasdaq, were 4.4 percent higher at $62 in after-hours trading. Shares of Bristol-Myers, which fell 1.8 percent to close at $20.62 on the New York Stock Exchange, were not trading after-hours.
Officials at ImClone could not be immediately reached for comment.
Bristol-Myers spokesman Brian Henry said the company would have no further comment.
(Reporting by Deena Beasley; Editing by Gary Hill & Ian Geoghegan)
