<<<I'm doubtful if ELN could have struck a better deal, (obviously JNJ wasn't the only player at the table) and to say ELN made a bad deal, is to say that not only every other company that passed on Bap also showed at lack of acumen, but that Citi did a poor job in shopping it.>>>
I am sure ELN got all it could for Bap and the alzheimer program. My calling it a crap deal has to be understood in context that it actually came down to having to sell the crown jewels. ELN's management could have rectified the financial issues long ago without having to make a desperate sale, for what it could get, for the alzheimer program.
Billions of value was destroyed based upon ELN's management's mishandling of this issue. Sure, the financial crisis was out of their control, but ELN could have played it like VRTX, for example, and done a large equity financing when the share price created the opportunity, long before the Bap results were revealed, they could have sold EDT sooner, they could have cut back spending, they could have done a lot of things that they did not do. The end result was this sale out of desperation and they got what they could for it.
Tinker