Valeant Pharma & Salix Pharma Amend Merger Terms; Lifts Offer Price

(RTTNews) - Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. (VRX, VRX.TO) and Salix Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. (SLXP) announced they have entered into an amendment to their Agreement and Plan of Merger. Valeant increased the offer price to acquire all the outstanding common stock of Salix from $158.00 per share to $173.00 per share in cash, or a total enterprise value of approximately $15.8 billion, through April 7, 2015. The revised offer price of $173.00 per share provides an additional approximately $1 billion in cash consideration to Salix stockholders.

Michael Pearson, CEO of Valeant, said: "By offering a significant premium with a 100% cash offer, eliminating market and company equity risk that could arise from other non-cash offers with a 4+ month closing timeline instead of a closing by April 1st, our new arrangement creates significant shareholder value for Salix. In addition, the transaction remains modestly accretive in 2015 and will be more than 20% accretive in 2016."

If the minimum tender condition is satisfied at the end of the day on March 31, 2015, Valeant expects to close the transaction on April 1, 2015. If all of the conditions to the tender offer have not been satisfied by April 8, 2015, the offer price will drop back to $158.00 per share.