WEEKEND BIG READ: The story of Elan, stranger than fiction.

THE story of Elan is so full of improbable twists that if you were to read about it in a novel, you would struggle to accept it as believable.

There are boardroom dramas, investor revolts, dazzling successes, catastrophic failures, lawsuits, hostile takeover bids, various public spats, de-mergers and a lengthy series of lay-offs and redundancies.

It all culminated last month with the sale of a hollowed out corporate shell which at one time comprised one-fifth of the value of the Irish Stock Exchange. And yet, that transaction, in which ownership of Elan moved to US generic drug maker Perrigo for $8.6bn, was hailed by the company as a success, the vindication of a corporate strategy characterised in recent months by increasingly fractious external relations.