King Gets Hostile With Alpharma

King Pharmaceuticals(KG Quote) on Thursday increased its bid for pain drug company Alpharma(ALO Quote), taking the matter straight to shareholders in the latest aggressive advance in the big pharma sector.

King's board has authorized a tender offer to purchase all of the outstanding shares of Class A Common Stock of Alpharma for $37 a share, an offer that already has been rejected by the company.

The new offer is a 67% premium to Alpharma's closing price on Aug. 4, the day of King's private written proposal to Alpharma, and a 54% premium over the closing price on Aug. 21, the last trading day before it was publicly made known.

"We have determined it is necessary to take our enhanced offer directly to Alpharma stockholders in order to deliver significant value to them as expeditiously as possible," King CEO Brian Markison said in a company statement.

King's hostile takeover attempt comes a day after ImClone(IMCL Quote) rejected a Bristol-Myers Squibb(BMY Quote) bid of $60 a share after receiving a better offer. The company said a mystery bidder had offered $70 a share.

Meanwhile, Biotech's golden child Genentech(DNA Quote) is still mulling Roche's $89-a-share bid.

King in August announced that it had bid $33 a share, giving Alpharma an equity value of $1.4 billion. Alpharma rejected that bid, and Markison upped the ante to $37 a share, giving Alpharma a total equity value of $1.6 billion. The new offer had a provision to allow Alpharma to solicit third-party offers after inking the merger for an agreed upon period.