For a 73-year-old man, Carl Icahn sure has some stamina. After failing to get Biogen Idec
Icahn better hope investors have his endurance. He's filed a slide deck -- 52 slides long -- with the Securities and Exchange Commission to try and convince investors that he can bring out value that management has squandered. There's a lot of good information in there, but investors may be turned off by the length and the ego stroking about how Icahn and his associates successfully increased the value of ImClone Systems and got Eli Lilly
If the goal is to get Biogen Idec sold, then splitting the company into a neurology-focused and a cancer-focused company seems pretty reasonable. Biogen Idec probably didn't get any definitive offers when it put itself up for sale in 2007, because of its multiple partnerships with different companies. Splitting the company would fix that by separating the Tysabri partnership with Elan
The split would make it easier to sell, but I'm not sure it will result in Icahn's goal of unleashing the pent-up value. Roche might be willing to buy the cancer-focused offspring, but it may be hard to get a bidding war going with the change of control provision that allows Roche to buy out Biogen Idec's half of Rituxan. The neurology-focused half of the company might attract a few bidders, but only if they can work out a deal with Elan to hold onto Tysabri before they sign the final papers -- something Icahn claims management didn't let potential bidders do in the past.
Between a fight with Amylin Pharmaceuticals'