The business stories that matter, by Fortune's Colin Barr
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December 12, 2007, 4:34 pm

Icahn’s Biogen blunder

Biogen Idec (BIIB) shares plunged after the biotech took itself off the block, saying that even after a two-month-long strategic review conducted by Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch it “did not receive any definitive offers to purchase the company.”

The decision, and the resulting 26 percent drop in the stock in Wednesday’s after-hours trading, won’t make any shareholders happy, but activist investor Carl Icahn seems likely to be particularly peeved. Icahn earlier this year took a substantial stake in the maker of the Tysabri treatment for multiple sclerosis and said he’d be willing to pay $80 a share for the whole company. Now the stock is fetching $56. That’s above its level back in the second quarter, when Icahn began building his stake - meaning he’s still likely to be ahead on the investment - but a far cry from the mid-80s where it traded at the height of the buyout rumor frenzy.

The stock’s slide brings to mind a comment analyst Caroline Stewart of Piper Jaffray made back in October, according to Fortune’s John Simons. “It’s crazy,” she said, “to suddenly say the stock is worth $20 more just because Carl Icahn says it is.” How right she was.

I say to sell it to icahn for 80.00 a share. He probably doesn’t want it now that he made a bundle by selling it.

Posted By J. Jones Cleveland Ohio : December 12, 2007 7:07 pm

look at mot since his snit

Posted By H.B.Sherman Phila.Pa. : December 12, 2007 5:45 pm
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Colin Barr covers business and finance for Fortune.com. Previously he was an editor at TheStreet.com and author of the weekly Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street column, and an editor at Dow Jones Newswires.
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