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OGS: Going, Going, Gone

 
• By Hazel Dawson

OGS-once one of European biotech's leading players-recently sold to compatriot Celltech for less than cash value. The deal shows that in the current climate, even bidding wars don't always push up acquisition prices, and cash remains king.

In 2000, riding the wave of euphoria surrounding the human genome project, the UK's Oxford GlycoSciences PLC raised £150 million ($230 million) in one of the largest secondary offerings the European biotech market had ever seen [See Deal]. Three years on—in very different market circumstances--it was OGS' remaining cash that became central to the European biotech sector's first bidding war. Yet notwithstanding the group's £136 million war chest as of the end of 2002, OGS ultimately sold to UCB Celltech in late April 2003 for only £101.4 million [See Deal].

In current markets, it's not unusual to see biotech companies trading—and being sold—below cash. Yet given the interest in OGS—at...

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