I believe that we will either see a merger come shortly after the announcements fly or a buy-out about a year from now then. They will need an enormous amount of cash to build up the systems and services required to support the US and EU businesses. Maybe, they could pull off UK alone, but it is the least profitable major market so that doesn’t help you too much.
I personally believe CRL has inside advantages in negotiations and would be foolish to pass up the opportunity to dominate cancer drug development. For them, actually, NWBO could be the first of many cellular/gene companies they later acquire because they have the development and manufacturing skeleton to go pretty broadly in advanced biotech. It just seems to me that LP knew what she was doing with everything Cognate related and it all fits the plan.