Perrigo positioning itself to buy delisted Taro 09.1.07 | 09:36 By Yoram Gavison The American drug company Perrigo, which is dual-listed in Tel Aviv since buying Israel's Agis Industries, is one of the contenders to buy another Israeli drug company: Taro Pharmaceutical Industries.
The candidates to buy Taro, in whole or in part, are expected to file their offers by week-end.
Taro makes generic versions of brand drugs, mainly for skin conditions. It was put on the block after its stock was delisted from Nasdaq on December 13, 2006, after failing to file its full financial statement for the year 2005. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had given it several extensions to file its report, but it never did.
The company is formally an American one, but it maintains production facilities in Israel, as well as in Ireland, Canada and the U.S.
It is controlled by two families, Levitt and Moros, via a joint company that holds shares conferring 33% of the voting rights, irrespective of the number of ordinary shares it holds.
Chairman Barrie Levitt, Daniel Moros and Tal Levitt own 8.8% of Taro's ordinary shares. Nobody could effect a hostile takeover of Taro: it would require the cooperation of the two families.
The leading candidates to buy Taro are Perrigo, which bought Agis in January 2005; the Ofer Hi-Tech equity fund, controlled in equal parts by Sammy Ofer and Udi Angel; and insofar as could be ascertained, an unnamed American company. Another potential buyer is businessman Shlomo Rodav, one of the controlling shareholders of Israel Cold Storage & Supply Co (TASE: CDSS), and Ishay Davidi's First Israel Mezzanine Investors.
There are vast difference between their offers, presumably because each is aiming at a different ultimate shareholding. Perrigo apparently aims to buy out all the shares held by the two families, while the others are apparently amenable to the demand of Barrie Levitt and the Moroses, who want to retain a stake and their clout at the company.
The offers will be presented to the Taro board, which will decide whether it's in the best interests of the company and its shareholders to let the two families remain, despite their having brought Taro so low. Once worth $2 billion on the stock exchange, now it isn't even listed.
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