AbbVie to buy Pharmacyclics for $21bn

CHICAGO: AbbVie Inc is to buy Pharmacyclics Inc for about $21 billion, giving it access to what is expected to be one of the world’s top-selling cancer drugs and expanding its reach in the profitable oncology field.

The deal — the latest example of a big drugmaker swooping on a biotech firm to refill its medicine pipeline — confounds expectations that Pharmacyclics would sell out to Johnson & Johnson.

AbbVie will pay $261.25 per share in cash and stock, a 13 per cent premium to Pharmacyclics stock’s closing price on Wednesday. Back in 2008 and 2009, the shares dipped below $1.—Reuters

Coca-Cola, McDonald’s wage ‘war’ on Russia

MOSCOW: Russian officials sharply criticised US fast-food giants Coca-Cola and McDonald’s on Thursday for their “unhealthy” products, comparing aggressive advertising campaigns to a war on citizens.

An aide to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev took aim at the companies for their “super-calorific” products in a sideswipe at the US at a time of high tension between the countries over Ukraine.

“The aggressive marketing they carry out — which has nothing to do with our culinary traditions — is comparable to a war against our people,” said Gennady Onishchenko, speaking to radio station Russkaya Sluzhba Novostei.

Onishchenko was previously Russia’s chief sanitation doctor, notorious for imposing sweeping bans on food imports from countries that were Moscow’s political foes for alleged hygiene breaches.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2015

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