Your Web Site
Roche, the Swiss drugs company, today made a $43.7 billion (£22 billion) cash bid for the remaining stake in Genentech, its San Francisco-based partner. Roche, which owns 55.9 per cent of the cancer drug specialist, said it would pay $89 a share for the remaining stock in Genentech, a 9 per cent premium to the biotech company’s closing price on Friday. Basel-based Roche made the bid while unveiling a 2 per cent fall in first-half net profit to $5.62 billion, hit by loss of sales of Tamiflu, its influenza drug, and the weak US dollar. Shares in Roche fell down 3.1 per cent. Roche, which has been a partner with Genentech since 1990, said a combined entity would generate more than $15 billion in annual revenue and employ a total of about 25,000 people in the US. The company did not specify how many of Genentech's 10,700... [read full story]
