US drugs maker Pfizer has made an improved offer for the British Pharmaceutical AstraZeneca as it tries to conclude the largest foreign takeover of a British company. The new offer of £55 per share would value AstraZeneca at about £69bn.
The offer constitutes a 15% increase from Pfizer's proposal on 2 May and is final and cannot be increased, it said. It also promised not to mount a hostile takeover - a direct approach to shareholders of AstraZeneca without the involvement of its board.
Shareholders are now being offered £24.76 in cash and 1.747 shares in the new firm - worth a combined £55 - for each share currently they hold, said the BBC chief economics correspondent.
Pfizer plans to create the world's largest drug company, with its headquarters in New York but based in the UK for tax purposes. The problem Pfizer is having in this take over bid is based on the notorious assumption that most American companies mount take-over bids to kill off competition and at the end dry-up jobs.
The British government want to make sure Pfizer will not move the comapany after the deal is done.
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