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Ichan seeks to elect Three more board members to Biogen Idec.......


http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/biogen-confirms-icahns-bid-for-3-board-seats/?partner=yahoofinance


Biogen Idec confirmed on Thursday it has received notice from Carl C. Icahn that he intends to nominate three people to its board as he seeks to expand his influence at one of the world’s biggest biotech companies.

Biogen, the Cambridge, Mass., company that makes the multiple sclerosis drugs Avonex and Tysabri, said it will evaluate the nominees and the proposal and make a recommendation “in the best interests of all shareholders,” Reuters reported.

Two of Mr. Icahn’s three nominees — Thomas Deuel and Eric Rowinsky — were part of the Icahn team that helped engineer the sale of biotechnology company ImClone Systems, which was sold to Eli Lilly & Company for $6.5 billion following a bitter proxy battle with the billionaire investor.

Alexander Denner, managing director at Icahn Partners, who headed the ImClone team, was elected to Biogen’s board last year, along with Richard Mulligan, a professor of genetics at the Harvard Medical School and a former member of ImClone’s Scientific Advisory Committee.

Mr. Icahn’s third nominee is Richard Young, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was on Mr. Icahn’s slate of nominees to Biogen’s board last year but was not elected.

“I see this as Icahn’s deliberate intention to take control of the board,” one portfolio manager, who owns 244,000 Biogen shares but asked to remain anonymous for compliance reasons, told Reuters. “He’s taken a page out of the book of ImClone.”

Four seats on the 12-member board are up for election. The company’s chief executive, James Mullen, is set to retire and will not stand. Neither will Bruce Ross, the company’s former chairman. The Biogen incumbents up for re-election are Brian Posner, previously the chief executive of ClearBridge Advisors, and Nancy Leaming, the retired chief of Tufts Health Plan.

Mr. Posner was part of Icahn’s slate of nominees to the board of Yahoo in 2008.

Icahn Partners and affiliates reported owning 16.1 million shares of Biogen, or 5.56 percent of the outstanding shares.

Biogen said the proxy materials also include a proposal to amend the company’s bylaws to fix the number of directors at 12.

Biogen’s shares were down 1.7 percent, to $52.66, in early afternoon trading on Nasdaq, amid broad losses for stocks.