Briefs: Elan tender offer; German drug price review; Daiichi Sankyo pays milestone

Ireland-based drugmaker Elan (NYSE: ELN) yesterday reported final results of its modified Dutch auction Tender Offer. The key results were: a) Tender strike price of $11.25 resulted in the retirement of 14.8% of the current shares in issue; b) Of the 116.4 million shares tendered at the strike price, 92.3% were tendered by one corporate shareholder; c) About 6.1% of the total shares in issue were tendered at $12.00 or less, and 16.0% were tendered above $12.00; and d) Only 4.3% of the total shares in issue were tendered at $11.75 or $12.00 e) Excluding the corporate shareholder’s shares, 73.1% of all other shares were not tendered at any price in the offered range of $11.25 to $13.00.

Commenting on the news, UBS analyst Guillaume van Renterghem, quoted by Bloomberg, said that "the fact that 60% of shares were not tendered makes us believe that the likelihood of Royalty Pharma being successful in its attempt to buy Elan has significantly reduced."

Also, US health care giant Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) announced the sale of  around 82 million American Depositary Shares (ADS) of Elan to Elan Corp. J&J subsidiary Janssen will receive $11.25 per ADS resulting in an after-tax gain of around $213 million, which will be recorded by J&J in the second-quarter 2012.