U.S. antitrust authorities and the German Federal Cartel Office cleared Varian Medical‘s (NYSE:VAR) $1.3B proposed buyout of Sirtex Medical (ASX:SRX), Varian reported today.
The companies first announced that they inked a deal for Varian to acquire all of Sirtex’s outstanding shares in January this year. The transaction is slated to close in late May.
Sirtex shareholders have yet to approve the deal and Varian is also waiting on the Federal Court of Australia, as well as additional regulatory approvals and closing conditions.
Varian priced the offer at A$28 per share, valuing Sirtex at A$1.59 billion – approximately $1.28 billion.
Sirtex makes a resin microsphere, SIR-Sphere Y-90, designed to deliver radiation therapy to liver cancers. Last year, shares in the Australian cancer therapy developer plunged after it posted a net loss of -A$26.9 million in 2016, compared to a profit of A$54 million the year before.
Sirtex faced an array of obstacles last year, including a number of clinical trials that failed to meet primary endpoints.
A “general uptick in competition for patients with liver-directed therapies and a generally tighter reimbursement environment” was partly to blame for what CEO Andrew McLean described as a “challenging” year, according to the company.
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