He just went hostile. Open, notorious and hostile -- on AZ's board -- at north of $100 billion. Wow. His April 28 letters are plainly a suggestion that he will consider going directly to AZ shareholders -- i.e., a proxy fight. This, my friends, is hostile takeover talk:
. . . .We made our intentions public to communicate what we believe are the benefits of a potential combination to shareholders of both companies, and to make clear to all our stakeholders the many advantages such combination of Pfizer and AstraZeneca would present. And we believe pursuing a potential transaction would support our recent reorganization into three new commercial businesses. . . .
Next steps really depend on the response we get from AstraZeneca. We’ve put out our announcement. We want to have conversations with them. When they progress, we’ll keep our promise to be as transparent as we can to our colleagues. I want an ownership culture. Ownership means I need to inform you. I need to be as transparent as I can. We will continue to let the colleagues know as much as we can, as soon as we can during this process.
So why do this now? Well, I would say why not now? Because now is a good time. We have a good structure. We have a good strategy. But we’re always looking for ways to improve it and accelerate it. And this is a great opportunity to go from strength to strength both in development, commercialization and our culture. . . .
Such goofily-mindless bravado (last bolded bit). In fact, it is filed under the takeover rules here in the US, at the SEC -- for proxy fights. But maybe all he is doing is messing with a competitor's morale. Maybe all Ian is up to is destabilizing AstraZeneca. And its board.
That at least makes sense -- and fits his rather Machiavellian "leadership" style. We shall see. We will only occasionally mention this -- as it only tangentially affects Merck -- at least until a super-majority of AZ shareholders indicate that they will vote in favor of Mr. Read's gambit.
UPDATED: the New York Times now has AstraZeneca's clear indication that this is now hostile: ". . .The company said that on Saturday, Pfizer’s chairman requested that the companies make an announcement before the markets opened on Monday saying they had entered discussions regarding a potential deal, though Pfizer did not make a specific proposal. AstraZeneca’s board declined. . . ." Yep. It is the '80s all over again. Crazy Ian.
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