STOCKWATCH: Alien invasions and base behavior in genomics
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
In the past few days it has become clear that the original $118 million bid for Californian genome sequencing firm Complete Genomics by China's BGI-Shenzhen was trumped by a $124 million bid from another US sequencing technology company Illumina. The higher bid was subsequently rejected by the Complete Genomics board, possibly because the company did not want to risk the use of a $30 million bridging loan that followed the signing of the merger agreement. Complete Genomics has argued in its SEC filings that the unsolicited offer from Illumina did not constitute ‘a Superior Proposal’ to BGI’s offer despite being worth 5% more because “among other reasons, there is a substantial likelihood that any transaction […] would fail to receive antitrust clearance.”