Icahn acquires ‘large’ stake in Allergan
Activist investor voices his support for pharma’s CEO
Activist investor Carl Icahn has taken a “large position” in global pharmaceutical company Allergan, the New York-based billionaire said Tuesday.
In a message posted on his website, Icahn expressed support for Allergan CEO Brent Saunders, the onetime Bausch + Lomb exec- utive he helped bring on board as CEO of Forest Laboratories in 2013.
“Less than a year later Forest was acquired by Actavis (which subsequently merged with Allergan) resulting in massive gains for Forest shareholders,” Icahn’s announcement said of the 2014 merger he championed and which produced a windfall for him as a major Forest investor.
“While we at that time disposed of our position in Forest, we still have always maintained great respect for Brent,” Icahn added in the announcement.
Allergan shares closed down fractionally at $235.75 Tuesday.
Icahn did not immediately disclose the precise size of the new stake in Allergan, whose products include the widely used cosmetic medication Botox.
The move marks the latest in a series of investments in which Icahn has bet heavily on large companies and then used his ownership to push for moves he contends will raise shareholder value.
He bought a major stake in tech and smartphone giant Apple, where he was instrumental in urging CEO Tim Cook to increase stock buybacks that helped boost the price of the company’s shares.
Icahn recently disclosed he had sold his Apple position over concerns about the company’s future in China’s growing market.
Through Friday’s trading, Dublin-based Allergan’s shares were down nearly 23.3% year to date.
In November the company announced what proved to be an illfated $160 billion merger plan with rival pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. The deal was designed as a corporate inversion that would have enabled New York-based Pfizer to cut its future tax bills by shifting its headquarters to Ireland, where levies are lower.
But Allergan and Pfizer scrapped the deal in April, days after the Obama administration imposed new rules that would make corporate tax inversions less profitable and more difficult to achieve. The merger’s collapse required Pfizer to pay Allergan a $150 million breakup fee.