Israeli Company With Montco HQ in $40B Bid to Become Largest Generic Drug Maker

Teva, which has its U.S. offices in North Wales, won’t take no for an answer in pursuit of Mylan N.V.

Teva Pharmaceuticals has offered to acquire Mylan N.V. for $82 per share — or approximately $40 billion. Teva is an Israeli company that employs 2,000 people at its U.S. headquarters in North Wales, Pa. It’s unclear how the possible merger would affect those workers, and a Teva representative declined to comment.

The deal would create the world’s largest maker of generic drugs by sales, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The 50-percent cash, 50-percent stock proposal is “a more attractive alternative” to Mylan’s proposed $28.9 billion acquisition of Perrigo Co. announced earlier this month, Teva said in a statement.

The Teva offer represents a 20 percent increase to Mylan’s Monday stock price and is 37.7 percent higher than its April 7th closing price.

But Mylan is hardly excited about the news. In fact, Mylan executive chairman Robert Coury said on April 17th (amid rumors of a Teva deal) that the company has no interest in being acquired.

“Mylan is fully committed to its stand-alone strategy, including its proposal to acquire Perrigo, and today’s speculation has no impact whatsoever on this strategy,” said Coury. “We have studied the potential combination of Mylan and Teva for some time and we believe it is clear that such a combination is without sound industrial logic or cultural fit. Further, there would be significant overlap in the companies’ businesses and we believe that it is unlikely that any such combination could obtain anti-trust regulatory clearances.”

Follow @JaredShelly on Twitter. Jared is the editor of Philadelphia magazine’s launching-soon business blog, @BizPhilly.