No one wants to believe Carl Icahn’s offer of $15 B for Biogen- even when he says he will increase R&d Spending

CNN once referred him as shrewdest investor on the planet. Carl Icahn who is now in the eye of storm for his involvment to throw the board of Yahoo for rejecting bid offer from Microsoft. The Billionaire corporate raider has made a beeline for the Lifescience Industry.

Carl Icahn, embroiled in a proxy battle with Biogen Idec, offered to pay as much as $15 billion last year for the company, the largest maker of drugs for multiple sclerosis. This week his move to throw out the board of Biogen has been rejected by shareholders as they voted in favor of the biotech’s own slate of directors instead of those nominated by activist investor Carl Icahn.

Seems like no one wants to believe him when he says he will pump in more money into R&D. Really?

according to a memo to shareholders filed today with the ( SEC) Securities and Exchange Commission. Icahn wants to boost spending on research and development, improve employee morale, mend relations with partners, and possibly cut expenses outside research,

In the biggest biotechnology deal of 2007, Icahn pushed MedImmune Inc. to sell itself to London-based AstraZeneca Plc for $15.2 billion

Why Pfizer planning a $5B USD counter bid for the largest Indian branded generics

While Invitrogen is making news merging into Applied Biosystems, with its $ 6.7 B USD deal creating the first of its kind of company, that can boast to own and invade every sphere of biological research from wet lab to information systems.

Pfizer is planning to counter bid the $4.6 billion offer by Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd  for the Indian generic drug maker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. Ranbaxy has been a thorn in the big pharma fight against, generics and branded generics. Reason Ranbaxy just got FDA approval–and 180-day exclusivity–to sell a copycat version of Pfizer’s cholesterol lowering drug lipitor beginning in March 2010. Why should  lose all that cholesterol-drug revenue when, with a buyout, it could recapture it?

Raising fears that Indian companies that supply WHO and other World Organizations with cheap medicine will go under the hammer of Big multinationals, prompting hike in prices of drugs for treating  AIDs to cancer, cholestrol , hyper-tension or even antibiotics to fight infections, whose prices are the lowest in the world . Perhaps the era of cheap drugs may be over.

India is the biggest supplier of cheaper versions of essential drugs to the developing world and has a share of nearly 25% in the overall generic space. Domestic generic biggies particularly Ranbaxy and Cipla have been recognized globally, not only for their low-cost medicines, but also of their ability to produce quality medicines.

For instance, Cipla offers a first line AID Medicine which is a combination of three drugs, at a price of $100 per patient per year as against the MNC tag of $10,349, a huge reduction of over 100 times.