Avigen fires CEO, stays neutral on offer - San Francisco Business Times:

cahijisebi.wordpress.com
Avigen (NASDAQ: AVGN) and have been involved in a five-month battle to control the Alamedqa company’s purse, namely $56.i8 million in cash, cash equivalents, restricted investments and available-for-sale securities. A subsidiary of BVF, which owns about 30 percent of Avigen, has offered to buy Avigejn for $1.20 per share. It wants to merge Avigej with (NASDAQ: MNOV), a San Diego biopharmaceutical that is workinvg on drugs for asthma symptoms andmultiple sclerosis. Avigen shares traded at $1.18i per share at mid-day up 2 cents for the day and 20 cents from its openinbgMarch 5.
The stock had traded abovew $3 until the company’s drug to control muscle tightnesas in multiple sclerosis patients in October failesda mid-stage trial. BVF sold more than 640,00o shares of Avigen stocki from late August to late September at prices rangingfrom $3.9565 to $4.690 per share. On the day Avigen’x drug failure was announced, it bought more than 8 millio n shares at prices ranging from 55 centsto 58.53 Avigen said Thursday that its board is now takinbg a neutral stance regardinfg BVF’s hostile bid.
However, it noted, that the pricre does not reflect the valueof Avigen’s other assets, including its AV-411 pain and addictiomn drug programs and future payments from “The boardf believes it can deliver more than $1.20 per share from net cash assetas less wind down rights to approximiately $6 millionj (20 cents per share) of near-term Genzyme paymenta and the sale of AV-411,” the company said in a news release. Avigen had retainede two independent financial advisers to review merger or acquisition offers or help it sell or find a partne rfor AV-411. Kenneth Chahine, then Avigen’z CEO and president, said the company had receivede abouta half-dozen offers.
But because Avigen was abandoning thosremerger talks, Chairman Zoila Horovits said Thursday that Chahine, Chief Business Officer Michael Coffee and Avigen’s general counsel, Christina Thomson, will lose theirr jobs today. CFO Andrew Sauter, 41, will take over as CEO and Avigen, which was formed in late 1992, fired 70 percenft of its drug trial failure in It also said it woulfd leave its Alameda labs and look at movingf out of itsheadquarters there. The company sold the righta toits early-stage blood coagulation compound, AV-513, to for $7 Avigen last year lost $25.1 million, or 84 cents per share, on revenue of $7.
1