Irish-based Shire buys rival for €5.3bn

Pharmaceutical giant Shire, which is headquartered in Ireland for tax purposes, has agreed to buy US rare disease specialist Dyax Corp for about $5.9bn (€5.35bn), and potentially up to $6.5bn, while still pursuing a five- times larger unsolicited bid for biopharma firm Baxalta Inc.

The Dyax deal, the latest in a series of purchases by the acquisitive Dublin-headquartered company, will give it access to the drug developer’s late-stage experimental treatment for a dangerous inflammatory disease that can block breathing.

It comes amid a record wave of deal-making in the broader healthcare sector so far this year, which amounted to $477bn as of last week.

Many of these are being driven by tax inversion considerations, allowing US firms relocate to lower-tax countries such as Ireland for tax purposes.

Last week saw Pfizer enter talks on a mega-billion dollar merger with Irish-registered Allergan.

Shire has been locked in a three-month battle to acquire Baxalta, although a drop in its shares has led some investors to suspect that takeover bid, worth $30bn when it was announced in August, may flounder.

However, Shire CEO Flemming Ornskov insisted his group had capacity to do both deals.

Meanwhile, Bristol-Myers Squibb said yesterday that it has bought privately held drug developer Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals Inc in a deal worth up to $2.07bn, to gain access to a heart failure treatment.

Bristol-Myers said Cardioxyl’s CXL-1427, which is in mid-stage studies, would add to its basket of heart treatments that include three experimental treatments in early- and mid-stage studies.