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GlaxoSmithKline PLC has tabled an offer to take over U.S. drug maker Human Genome Sciences Inc. which values the target at nearly $2.6 billion.
GlaxoSmithKline, which has profit-sharing agreements with HGS on three drugs but a minimal shareholding, said Wednesday it is offering $13 cash per share for the company. A private offer last month by GSK at the same price was rejected by HGS management last month.
GSK said its offer was 81 percent more than the HGS share price on April 18, before HGS disclosed the earlier private offer. HGS shares closed at $14.39 Tuesday on the Nasdaq exchange.
The tender offer, which is a direct approach to the target’s shareholders, will remain open for 20 days. GSK said it hoped to complete the deal on a friendly basis.
GlaxoSmithKline shares were down 0.7 percent at 1,414 pence in early trading.
Human Genome Sciences, based in Rockville, Maryland, has a 50-50 profit sharing agreement with GSK on the lupus drug Benlysta, which won regulatory approval in the United States and Europe last year small personal loans. Benlysta accounted for $31.2 million of HGS’ first quarter revenue of $47.1 million.
The two companies are also cooperating in late-stage development of darapladib, for the treatment of cardiovascular disease, and albiglutide, for type 2 diabetes.
“GSK values the long relationship it has with HGS and has clearly stated its preference to complete a transaction on a friendly basis in a timely fashion,” the company said. “GSK remains willing to meet and review its offer with HGS at any time.”
Payday loans no faxing fall on the less risky side simply because the money loaned to you is a percentage of your next paycheck.
Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said central bank officials are prepared to take unpopular measures to prevent banking excesses from undermining financial stability and economic growth.
For the first time since the start of 2008, bonds were the only investments to provide positive returns amid renewed concern the global economy is slowing and as widening deficits in Europe threaten contagion.
Fixed-income assets — from Australian government debt to U.S. Treasuries to global junk bonds — gained 0.7 percent last month including reinvested interest, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data. The MSCI All-Country World Index of stocks lost 1.1 percent including dividends while the Standard & Poor
British Prime Minister David Cameron says he discussed News Corp.’s bid to take full control of a British broadcaster with James Murdoch, but denies promising to support the deal in return for favorable coverage from the media giant’s newspapers.
A judge-led inquiry into media ethics in Britain has raised questions about the government’s links to News Corp., particularly as it deliberated on whether the firm should be authorized to take full control of British Sky Broadcasting, in which it holds a 39 percent stake.
Cameron told BBC television Sunday that had chatted about the takeover bid with James Murdoch at a Christmas party, but insisted he had not brokered any tit-for-tat deal with him or his media mogul father Rupert Murdoch.
European officials travel to Washington this week seeking a bigger global war chest to combat the debt crisis as Spain
Americans are buying record numbers of hybrid and electric cars as gas prices climb and new models arrive in showrooms, giving the vehicles their greatest share yet of the U.S. auto market.
Consumers bought a record 52,000 gas-electric hybrids and all-electric cars in March, up from 34,000 during the same month last year.
The two categories combined made up 3.64 percent of total U.S. sales, their highest monthly market share ever, according to Ward’s AutoInfoBank. The previous high was 3.56 percent in July 2009, during the Cash for Clunkers program.
And while their share of the market remains small, it’s a big leap from the start of the year, when hybrids and electrics made up 2.38 percent of new car sales.
Buyers were drawn by new models like the Toyota Prius C subcompact, the Prius V wagon and Camry hybrid. Gas prices near or above $4 per gallon added to the cars’ attraction.
Stronger sales of the Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf were a positive sign for electric car makers. The two have struggled to gain acceptance from buyers worried about how far they can drive on a battery charge.
Another concern: Volt maker General Motors Co. had to change the car’s charging system because its batteries caught fire after government crash tests.
GM sold just 7,671 Volts last year, below its goal of 10,000. But in March, it set a new monthly record of 2,289 for the Volt, an electric car with a small backup gas engine personal loan for poor credit. Sales of the all-electric Leaf nearly doubled to 579.
Gas prices helped sales. The nationwide average for a gallon of gas jumped 19 cents in March, from $3.73 to $3.92, and it crossed the $4 mark in California even earlier. The $4 mark was a significant psychological milestone, said Paul Lacy, who forecasts sales trends for consulting firm IHS Automotive.
Lacy expects hybrids and electrics to make up about 4 percent of U.S. sales this year, although sales could drop if gas prices fall or if buyers get more accustomed to higher prices.
Lacy predicts hybrids and electrics will double their market share to 8.5 percent by 2017, in part because there will be more options on the market. Last month, 35 hybrids and electrics were on sale, double the number from 2008.
The proliferation of models will also bring down costs. Hybrids cost around $2,000 to $4,000 more than their gas counterparts, which can make them less attractive. Edmunds.com estimates it takes 11 years’ worth of gas savings to recoup the $4,595 premium on the Honda Civic hybrid, or 5.2 years to make back the $3,400 premium on the Toyota Camry hybrid.
Toyota Motor Co.’s Prius hybrid cars were the runaway best-sellers last month. They made up 57 percent of all hybrids and electrics sold.
The U.K. trade deficit widened to the most in three months in February as exports of cars and heavy machinery fell, especially to the U.S., China and Russia.
The goods-trade gap widened to 8.77 billion pounds ($14 billion) from a revised 7.88 billion pounds in January, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. The median of 18 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey was for a deficit of 7.65 billion pounds. Exports fell 3.4 percent while imports were unchanged.
Prime Minister David Cameron is in Asia this week, leading a trade and diplomatic mission seeking to boost commercial ties with the region. The government hopes exports can bolster the British economy as manufacturers cope with rising unemployment and inflation that
President Obama on Tuesday continued to beat the drum for the Buffett Rule, his campaign-ready tax proposal aimed at millionaires and billionaires.
A central message of Obama’s re-election campaign is his argument that the very rich should pay more in taxes.
Quiz: What the rich really pay in taxes
"When it comes to paying down the deficit and investing in our future, should we ask middle-class Americans to pay even more at a time when their budgets are already stretched to the breaking point? Or should we ask some of the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share?" Obama said recently.
Obama’s not alone in pushing the Buffett Rule. Next week, Senate Democrats hope to vote on legislation modeled on Obama’s proposal.
The legislation is not expected to advance very far, if at all. But you’ll be hearing a lot about the Buffett Rule in coming months.
And like most campaign planks, the Buffett Rule doesn’t necessarily make for the best policy, at least from the perspective of many tax experts.
What is the Buffett Rule exactly? The general principle behind the proposal is that millionaires and billionaires like investor Warren Buffett shouldn’t pay a lower percentage of their income in federal taxes than middle-class households.
Obama has even set a threshold for how much they should pay: At least 30% of their income.
The president proposed the rule last year as a guiding principle for tax reform, and he later touted it as a replacement for the Alternative Minimum Tax.
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On Capitol Hill, the Senate will hold a procedural vote on one version that would apply to today’s tax code and serve as an "interim step" to tax reform.
The "Paying a Fair Share Act," introduced by Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, would apply to anyone whose adjustable gross income exceeds $1 million. Those who itemize their deductions would get a credit equal to the value of their charitable contribution deductions, so as not to discourage charitable giving.
To measure whether a millionaire is paying at least 30% of his income in taxes, the bill would take into account what the individual paid in federal income and payroll taxes plus the new 3.8% Medicare surtax set to take effect in 2013.
The minimum effective tax rate would be phased in for those with incomes between $1 million and $2 million electronic check payday advance.
The independent Tax Policy Center estimates that 35% of the richest would pay higher taxes under the bill than they do today.
How much revenue would it raise? The Joint Committee on Taxation, which analyzes tax legislation, has estimated that the "Paying a Fair Share Act" would raise $47 billion over 10 years, or an average of less than $5 billion a year, assuming the Bush tax cuts expire.
That wouldn’t do much to help reduce federal deficits. In recent years, annual deficits have ranged from several hundred billion dollars to more than $1 trillion.
And if the rule were to serve as a replacement for the AMT, as Obama has proposed, it wouldn’t come close to making up for the $1 trillion-plus in revenue that the AMT is expected to generate over 10 years.
What do independent tax experts think of the Buffett Rule? Tuning out the partisan rhetoric on both sides, tax experts say the Buffett Rule would further complicate an already complex tax code by adding a new minimum tax on top of the old AMT.
What’s more, the evidence that the Buffett Rule is correcting a big disparity in the tax code is not so clear cut.
For example, even without a Buffett Rule, most millionaires already pay more in taxes as a percentage of their income than those in the middle class, said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. Not always as much as 30%, but a higher percentage of their income than the vast majority of the middle class.
And the Congressional Research Service notes that today’s tax code doesn’t violate the Buffett rule as egregiously as Warren Buffett and others have asserted. Using 2006 data, the CRS found the average tax rate among millionaires is almost 30% — with about a tenth of them paying a rate higher than 35% and another tenth paying a rate below 24%.
Lastly, tax reform done right shouldn’t create a need for a Buffett Rule, an AMT or any other accessory to the tax code, Williams said.
The only reason policymakers call for such measures is when they don’t like the outcomes of the system they’ve got. Tax reform is their chance to design a better system. And if one goal is to tax the rich more, they can do that in a simpler, more effective way than the Buffett Rule.
Iran is signaling a possible compromise offer heading into critical talks with world powers deeply suspicious of its nuclear program: offering to scale back uranium enrichment but not abandon the ability to make nuclear fuel.
The proposal _ floated by the country’s nuclear chief as part of the early parrying in various capitals before negotiations get under way Friday _ suggested that sanctions-battered Iran is ready to bargain. But this gambit, at least, appeared to fall short of Western demands that Iran hand over its most potent nuclear material.
Still, the public jockeying ahead of the talks pointed to an attempt to ease a standoff that has rattled nerves and spooked markets with seesaw oil prices and threats of Israeli military strikes. The talks involving Iran and the five permanent U.N. Security Council nations plus Germany, to be held in Istanbul, are the first direct negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program since a swift collapse more than 14 months ago.
Despite far-reaching complexities, the dispute effectively boils down to one issue: Iran’s stated refusal to close down its uranium enrichment labs.
For Iran, uranium enrichment is a proud symbol of its scientific advances and technological self-sufficiency. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called the nuclear program on Sunday “a locomotive” for other showcase projects such as Iran’s space effort.
The U.S. and its allies contend that the same sites that make fuel for reactors could also eventually churn out weapons-grade material. Iran has repeatedly insisted that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
The ideas put forth late Sunday by the nuclear chief, Fereidoun Abbasi, are an attempt to at least acknowledge this huge divide.
Abbasi said Tehran could eventually stop its production of the 20 percent enriched uranium needed for a research reactor, used for medical research and treatments. But, he added, Iran would continue enriching uranium to lower levels of about 3.5 percent for power generation.
The framework addresses one key Western concern. The U.S. and others worry the higher-enriched uranium could be turned into warhead strength _ more than 90 percent enriched _ in a matter of months.
Yet Abbasi also directly snubbed a demand backed by the U.S. and some other countries. They want Iran’s stockpile of 20 percent-enriched uranium to be transferred out of the country. Abbasi indicated that it would remain in Iran.
“Such a stockpile could enable Iran to make a bomb in the future, should it decide to do so,” said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born political analyst now based in Israel.
“Unless an agreement is reached whereby this stockpile is transferred abroad for conversion into nuclear fuel or, at the very minimum, placed under international supervision in an another country, it will be very difficult for the (world powers) to accept Iran’s current offer,” he said.
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said it was up to Iran to show that its claim of rejecting nuclear weapons is “not an abstract belief but it is a government policy.”
“And that government policy can be demonstrated in a number of ways, by ending the enrichment of highly enriched uranium to 20 percent, by shipping out such highly enriched uranium out of the country, by opening up to constant inspections and verifications,” she said at a conference in Istanbul to seek ways to aid opposition forces in Syria _ Iran’s main Arab ally.
Clinton will not be attending Friday’s conference on Iran. The State Department’s third-ranking diplomat, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, will lead the U payday loan companies.S. delegation.
Abbasi also insisted that Iran will never close down its new underground enrichment facilities south of Tehran, saying it would be “illogical” for the West to raise such a demand.
It’s unclear, however, whether Abbasi was conveying a real negotiating position or simply testing the waters.
The proposal came from an unconventional venue, airing just before midnight on a state-run TV channel for Iranians and other Farsi-speakers abroad. Iran has used its array of government-controlled media, such as its Arabic-language Al-Alam channel, to make regional and international policy statements.
Abbasi said production of uranium enriched up to 20 percent is not part of the nation’s long-term program _ beyond amounts needed for its research reactor in Tehran _ and insisted that Iran “doesn’t need” to enrich beyond the 20 percent levels.
“The job is being carried out based on need,” he said. “When the need is met, we will decrease production and it is even possible to completely reverse to only 3.5 percent” enrichment levels.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted on the Iranian parliament’s website Monday as saying he hopes for some progress in the talks. But he warned that Iran would not accept preconditions _ an apparent reference to last year’s impasse.
The U.S. and its allies have sought to press Iran to suspend uranium enrichment in exchange for receiving reactor-ready fuel from abroad. Iran has pushed back by refusing to curtail enrichment, which is permitted under the U.N. treaty overseeing the spread of nuclear technology.
“We will honestly try to have the two sides conclude with a win-win situation in which Iran achieves its rights while removing concerns of five-plus-one group,” Salehi said, using the name often used for the five permanent Security Council members and Germany. “But imposing any conditions before the talks would be meaningless.”
Abbasi’s remarks also could be a bid to tone down the rhetoric.
Last week, Iranian lawmaker Gholam Reza Mesbahi Moghadam claimed Tehran has the know-how and the capability to produce a nuclear weapon, but would never do so. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also has said that Iran does not seek nuclear arms and described them as against the tenets of Islam.
“The Iranians themselves have said, at the level of the supreme leader, that they don’t have any weapons intention,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Monday. “Well, if that is in fact the case, then it ought be relatively straightforward for them to demonstrate that to the international community’s satisfaction, and that’s what we’re talking about when we see them.”
After a protracted flap over the venue for the talks, Iranian state TV reported Sunday that both sides had agreed on Istanbul. It said a second round would be held in Baghdad, and that its timing would be decided during the meeting in Turkey. This suggested that Iran views the process as a potential slow, step-by-step series of talks.
The venue still has to be formally confirmed by the European Union’s foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton. But a diplomat familiar with the preparations for the talks confirmed to The Associated Press on Monday that Istanbul had been chosen for the first round.
The diplomat demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information ahead of the formal announcement.
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