And, I must note that I am increasingly concerned that Mr. Read is out of his depth here. He doesn't show much evidence that he's thought more than one move ahead -- on the trans-Atlantic chess-board, here. In his ancillary SEC filings this afternoon, he made it plain that a hostile bid is not off the table. Yet as we've shown, a hostile bid has a nearly nil chance of getting him the math for his inversion. No, if he is to do a deal -- he will need to make it friendly -- by overpaying. Paying up around $120 billion, and then rejiggering the whole convoluted mess -- to make the math on share counts work out to avoid tripping the US tax reforms aimed at culling the abusive sham tax inversions. So, even as he tells his team to "keep calm and carry on," he looks to be a man more and more in need of this deal -- and at (almost) any price. You read it here first, folks. From his SEC takeover filings of today:
. . . .There will continue to be much speculation in the media as we evaluate our options and determine next steps. Over the course of the next several weeks you will continue to see stories in the press that will attempt to shed doubt on our commitment to research. Please try to ignore this and any future inaccurate chatter. Much of what you will read is purely speculative or even intended to create confusion and doubt. Given there are constraints under the UK Takeover Code as to what we can say about a potential transaction with AstraZeneca, we will do our best to provide updates when possible. . . .
So now we watch and wait a bit -- will Ian C. Read declare full-on war, on AstraZeneca's board of directors, as early as tomorrow? Or will he wait until May 25, and use the UK regulatory regime -- to run the guardrails on his either hostile bid (or to partially put the brakes on his overpaying, and thus suddenly cloyingly friendly) bid? Or will he take a walk (effectively admitting his intent was simply to destabilze a competitor)? Do stay tuned.
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