Icahn seeks to influence Genzyme, nominating four board directors

Billionaire US investor Carl Icahn is taking the fight to troubled US biotechnology firm Genzyme - of which he owns around 2% - 'in a bid to wrest control of the company from embattled chairman and chief executive Henri Termeer, reported TheStreet.com early yesterday morning before an official statement was made.

Mr Icahn has a track record of interfering in companies where he is a stakeholder. He has already gained board seats at another US biotech, Biogen Idec, and threatened a proxy war on MedImmune, which ended up selling itself to Anglo-Swedish drug major AstraZeneca for $15.6 billion in 2007. He also took control of ImClone Systems in 2006 and sold it to US major Eli Lilly for $6.5 billion in 2008, earning himself a profit of at least $400 million, recalled an article in the New York Times.

Genzyme itself later revealed that it has received notice from Icahn Partners LP and certain of its affiliates of their intention to nominate four individuals to its board of directors at the company's 2010 annual meeting of shareholders. They are Mr Icahn himself, Alexander Denner, who is Mr Icahn's biotechnology portfolio manager; Richard Mulligan, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School; and Steven Burakoff, director of the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Mount Sinai Medical Center.