Novartis is buying French-based Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA) for $3.9 billion, giving the Swiss drugmaker a platform in radiopharmaceuticals and access to a new therapy for the kind of cancer that killed Steve Jobs.
The cash offer of $41 per ordinary share and $82 per American depository share represents a 47 percent premium to AAA's price before media reports on Sept. 27 that Novartis was interested. The ADS closed on Friday at $72.91 and were priced at only $16 when they listed two years ago.
Novartis said on Monday it would use debt to finance the deal, which would reap AAA founder and 11 percent owner Stefano Buono more than $420 million.
The transaction fits Novartis Chief Executive Joe Jimenez's strategy of pursuing bolt-on deals worth up to around $5 billion rather than seeking out larger targets.
With AAA, Novartis gets technology that deploys trace amounts of radioactive compounds to not only create images of organs and lesions to diagnose diseases but which can also be used to fight cancer.