The big asset buy in the healthcare industry provided a healthy pop to the two companies involved on Thursday. The stock price of the buyer, sector mainstay AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV), enjoyed a nearly 3% lift after the news was announced, contrasting quite favorably to the sagging S 500 index's 0.7% slip.
Before market open that day, AbbVie and (NASDAQ: IMGN) announced in a joint press release that the former company is to acquire the latter. AbbVie is to pay $31.26 per share in cash for ImmunoGen in a transaction valued at roughly $10.1 billion. That per-share figure is nearly double ImmunoGen's closing price on Wednesday, indicating AbbVie's thirst for the deal.
ImmunoGen is a biotech company that focuses on cancer therapies. It has been in the news this year; in May, it reported that one of the drugs it's developed, Elahere, had performed well in a late-stage clinical trial to treat a certain type of ovarian cancer. The drug received its first approval from the Food and Drug Administration just over one year ago.
Source Fool.com