Cerevel failed to draw Pfizer into a bidding war, but got AbbVie to up its price anyway, filing shows

Ab­b­Vie’s $45-per-share, $8.7 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of the neu­ro­science drug de­vel­op­er Cerev­el Ther­a­peu­tics was $10 per share high­er than its ini­tial bid, ac­cord­ing to de­tails in an SEC fil­ing, as the big phar­ma upped its price de­spite a lack of for­mal of­fers from oth­er suit­ors.

The fil­ing de­tails sev­er­al months of ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween Cerev­el and oth­er com­pa­nies when it first ex­plored a re­gion­al part­ner­ship in Japan for its lead schiz­o­phre­nia and Alzheimer’s dis­ease psy­chosis drug. Those talks even­tu­al­ly fell apart but would be re­born as full-fledged takeover dis­cus­sions that led to the deal an­nounced late last year.

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