ONE MORE THING: IRISH PHARMA group Azur was swallowed whole this week by Nasdaq-listed Jazz Pharmaceuticals, which specialises in narcolepsy products.
No cash changed hands. Instead, shareholders in Azur have been given 20 per cent of the combined entity. Azur had a healthy paper value of $500 million (€388m) at the time of the deal.
Azur chief Séamus Mulligan, a former Elan exec, and the four other senior management at the Irish business have been given positions at Jazz.
“They bring a lot of expertise to the business development side,” Jazz’s chairman and chief executive Bruce Cozadd told me on Wednesday.
Cozadd, a music nut hence the company’s name, had no fears about investing in Ireland in spite of the negative press that the country has received in the past few years.
“We’re not buying a bank,” he said, “we’re buying a pharma company. I’ve done business in Ireland before and had great experiences. We have a great opportunity to grow from here.”
Jazz will be domiciled in Ireland, a move that should prove beneficial from a tax point of view in the years ahead. There are currently 20 jobs based in Ireland but Cozadd plans to add to that figure.
“We have started the process of expanding and will continue that,” he said, hinting at possible talks with the IDA.
For media-shy Mulligan, this looks like a good piece of business, especially as Azur is just over six years old.
Jazz is well capitalised.
While it hasn’t made a profit yet, it is projecting revenues of $460-490 million for this year and a net profit of $240-249 million. It is debt free and has about $250 million in cash on its balance sheet.
It is also good news for a clutch of Davy private clients who backed Azur in its early days. Their stock is now worth three to four times what they invested. Most of them probably thought they would never see such a deal again.
