More Details:
Connecting the Dots: Amarin-Pharmakon-Royalty-Elan-Amarin
Royalty Pharma tried to acquire Elan a year ago but Perrigo outbid them.
Elan CEO is on record openly discussing Elan's interest in Amarin:
Transcript:
Donnel O'Causic: I'd like to put a question to the board. Does the board ever envisage making a bid for Amarin? It's a former member, who have put under market the drug, AMR-101 or Vascepa . And when I heard you were making a bid last week, I had half imagined or hoped that maybe you would bring Amarin('s) Vascepa, whatever you like.
Robert Alexander Ingram - Non-Executive Chairman and Member of Nominating & Governance Committee (Elan Corp):
Thank you very much for both the question and your suggestion. I can tell you that as a board working with management, we keep an open mind and look at number of opportunities. And to that point, as soon as, actually in advance of consummating the Tysabri transaction with Biogen, we knew that we, as a result of that transaction, we're going to have these financial proceeds. And stating the obvious to just sit on that amount of cash is, in today's market, not in your best interest. So even then, long before Royalty ever showed up at our door, we were looking at a number of transactions.... To your specific question, that is still an opportunity we are considering. We don't close our mind to any of these things. At some point, we'll have to decide whether that is a better opportunity than competing opportunities. And all I can say is we don't foreclose that as a possibility. Kelly, I don't know if you want to add anything to those comments?
G. Kelly Martin - Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director:
I would just add specifically that as our Chairman said, once we did the Tysabri transaction, having $3 billion in our P&L in our balance sheet, so we became very popular around the world of many people. We've spoken to dozens and dozens and dozens of companies around the world. I would also say that with our board, these strategic thoughts and discussions started well over a year ago. Amarin specifically has done a fantastic job in shepherding a molecule they had. Like it often happens in drug development-- they had an initial stumble on their initial indication in, i believe, Huntington's. The CEO there has done a great job. Their board has done a great job, and they're in a very good position from an asset point of view. We know them, they know us. We know many people. Our approach in talking to other companies is to be open to find win-win situations. And if you can do that, you can transact in many different ways. So as I would just repeat what Bob said that, in our discussions with all these companies, all of these things are considered all the time. The 4 -- the initial 4 transactions provide us, we believe, with incremental income and P&L and diversity of assets, which is fundamental to the business. But Amarin is a great company. They've done a great job, and we suspect they'll continue to do a great job.
Robert Alexander Ingram - Non-Executive Chairman and Member of Nominating & Governance Committee:
And I think your encouragement, we'll make sure that we continue to keep that on the list. Thank you very much.
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Conclusion: It's far from over.
