Amgen eyes $10-bn cash deal with Onyx Pharmaceuticals: report

Amgen Inc, the world's largest biotechnology firm, has offered to buy its smaller peer Onyx Pharmaceuticals for $120 per share or $10 billion in cash, Canadian newspaper Financial Post yesterday reported.

The paper said that it had seen documents sent by Amgen to Onyx about two weeks back, where it had proposed buying Onyx for $120 a share or about $10 billion, a 34-per cent premium to Onyx's closing share price.

Amgen, based in Thousand Oaks, California, has requested due diligence, a document review period and said that the deal is not subject to any financing condition.

With market cap of $79.7 billion and annual revenues of $16.6 billion, Amgen discovers, develops, manufactures and delivers innovative human therapeutics.

A biotechnology pioneer since 1980, the Nasdaq-listed company makes drugs for cancer, kidney disease, rheumatoid arthritis, bone disease and other serious illnesses.

Based in South San Francisco, California, Onyx develops innovative therapies for treating cancer.

Its key drugs are Nexavar, for treating patients with advanced cancer in the kidney and liver, and Kyprolis, a proteasome inhibitor for treating patients with multiple myeloma.

In the pipeline are Sorafenib, which has been evaluated in a Phase 3 trial for treating thyroid cancer, and is currently being evaluated in late-stage studies in breast cancer and as an add-on treatment for liver and kidney cancer following surgery.

Sorafenib is developed and marketed in collaboration with Bayer HealthCare.

Carfilzomib is being studied in multiple clinical trials either as a single-agent or in combination with other therapies for the treatment of patients with multiple myeloma, and Palbociclib, a collaboration with Pfizer and currently in Phase 3 clinical development for hematologic malignancies and solid tumors.

Onyx would receive milestone and royalty payments on Palbociclib worldwide sales.

Also in the pipeline is ONX 0914, an immunoproteasome inhibitor for treating autoimmune disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and lupus.

A completed transaction would be the second mega deal this year in the life sciences sector, after Thermo Fisher Scientific acquired Life Technologies Corp for $13.6 billion.