$heff's $tation of $tocks & $olid DD

[manny t]

ARNA-VVUS-OREX,

Weight-loss companies in play--Bloomberg

"Vivus could now lure interest from Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Merck & Co. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY), with annual sales of the Qnexa pill projected to reach $5 billion by 2020, according to Rodman & Renshaw LLC. After more than a decade of weight-loss treatments presented risks from heart disease to brain tumors, the FDA’s receptivity to Qnexa may also put rival obesity-drug developers Orexigen Therapeutics Inc. (OREX) and Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ARNA) in play as more than one-third of U.S. adults suffer from obesity, JMP Securities said.
“The FDA has clearly crossed the Rubicon of balancing risk and benefit, understanding that the obesity problem is a pandemic,” Michael King, a New York-based analyst at Rodman & Renshaw, said in a telephone interview. “There are not a lot of products around in the pharmaceutical industry that address such large market opportunities. Vivus is not going to give this up cheap.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-29/obesity-epidemic-prompting-vivus-takeover-talk-with-68-windfall-real-m-a.html?cmpid=yhoo