Contentious Biogen Idec Meeting Delayed; Icahn Nominee Objects, Saying “This is Not North Korea”

Shareholders of Cambridge, MA-based Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: [[ticker:BIIB]]) will have to wait a while to hear the outcome of the hotly contested board election. The company’s board called a recess during the annual meeting before results were announced on whether billionaire investor Carl Icahn was able to gain any seats on the company’s 13-member board.

The morning session of the meeting was contentious, and the call for a recess drew an objection from Alex Denner, one of the four nominees Icahn has put forward for the Biogen board. Icahn’s nominees shouted objections to the recess, calling it an improper manipulation of the process, according to this Wall Street Journal account.

“This is not North Korea,” Denner called out to Biogen chairman Bruce Ross after the recess was called, according to a Reuters account.

The meeting is expected to resume at 2 pm Eastern time.

Author: Luke Timmerman

Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. He has served as national biotechnology editor for Xconomy and national biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News. Luke got started covering life sciences at The Seattle Times, where he was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and several other national prizes. Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and during the 2005-2006 academic year, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.