Friday, July 30, 2010

Today's [Non-] Update On Remicade®/Simponi® Arbitration


In answer to the request of a kindly commenter, here's what little was said on Remicade®/Simponi® (really not much of anything) today, per SeekingAlpha transcripts:

. . . .Question: Tim Anderson, Bernstein Research

I know you don't like to say much about the REMICADE dispute, but I'm hoping you can give us some more information. You used to talk about being highly confident that you would prevail in the dispute, but I don't really hear that language being used anymore and I'm wondering if that's still the case. On arbitration, can you run through different options here? Is it all or nothing, or could there be some sort of middle ground or what exactly? And then your comments about not impacting 2013, it's not clear to me why that wouldn't impact your 2013 guidance because it is a pretty material contributor to your financials. And by extension, if it doesn't impact 2013, can we assume that it wouldn't impact 2010 either?

. . . .Answer: Bruce Kuhlik, General Counsel, Merck

At this point, we provided the information about when we expect the arbitration hearing to begin and the selection of the panel. We're looking at whether we can provide some additional information with respect to the process, and I hope to do that in a relatively near future. We continue to believe very strongly that we've structured this transaction in a way that's appropriate for the REMICADE distribution agreement. . . .

The question was more accurate than the answer -- Merck has definitely pulled in its horns on talk about confidence-levels in any specific set of outcomes. Now, they'll only say they "believe they've structured" appropriately. Indeed.

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