RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Shareholders in BioCryst Pharmaceuticals rejected a merger with Pennsylvania-based Idera Pharmaceuticals in a special shareholders meeting on Tuesday.
The merger lost by a vote of 50.6 million to 32.3 million.
Some investors had publicly expressed opposition to the deal ahead of the vote.
Among them was Dr. Jeffrey Jay of Great Point Partners LLC in Greenwich, Connecticut, who owned 7.5 million shares of Biocryst, or 7.6 percent of its stock, as of February.
In a securities filing, Jay argued that Biocryst’s stock is “is undervalued and represent a low-risk and high reward investment in the spectrum of such companies.” He later said that he is “strongly opposed to the merger with Idera.”
Jay, in the filing, said that the deal undervalued Biocryst.
“The merger is significantly unbalanced and represents a substantial transfer of highly valuable company assets to the shareholders of Idera in exchange for more speculative Idera assets of far more uncertain value,” said Jay in the filing.
Idera shareholders voted in favor of the deal.
The merger had been announced in January.
(North Carolina Business News Wire contributed to this story.)
