BILLIONAIRE INVESTOR Carl Icahn has lost his battle for control of biotechnology company Biogen Idec as shareholders voted down his candidates for the board.
A preliminary count showed support for a management team of four candidates to help lead the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company, Biogen said yesterday in a statement.
Alex Denner, one of Mr Icahn's board choices, said at the meeting that Biogen, Elan's MS partner, needed to cut costs, and that the billionaire wanted to work with the company to improve research and employee morale. Biogen, the world's biggest maker of MS drugs, became embroiled in a fight for control with Mr Icahn last December, when the company abandoned a plan to sell itself after getting no offers other than one from the investor.
The billionaire, known for buying into companies he deems undervalued and pushing for change or a sale, proposed his team for Biogen's board in January, calling the sale process "flawed".
"I don't think there's any way in which outside observers could fairly criticise Biogen management for the way they handled the sale process," said Eric Schmidt, an analyst with Cowen Co in New York.
"They can't be faulted or praised. They have done the best they can with the cards they were dealt."
Mr Icahn's bid to push a sale with a slate of dissident directors showed signs of fading last week when three proxy adviser firms - ISS Governance Services, Proxy Governance and Glass Lewis Co - said he failed to prove the sale process was mismanaged.
Shareholders elected Stelios Papadopoulos, Cecil Pickett, Lynn Schenk and Phillip Sharp to fill four open seats on the 12-member board, Biogen said. Rejected were Mr Denner and Richard Mulligan, who are members of the ImClone Systems board chaired by Icahn, and Massachusetts General Hospital neurology chief Anne Young.
"We're major shareholders and we have the support of major shareholders," Mr Denner said at the meeting. "Our argument was that as major shareholders we should have a seat on the [Biogen] board." - (Bloomberg)
