system disorders.” The company also says it is being advised by Jefferies & Company, Inc. and Perella Weinberg Partners, with legal counsel from the Cooley law firm.
While Cypress says it will continue to fill orders for its Avise line of personalized medicine services, the company will either sell or discontinue the business by the end of September.
The company estimates that exiting its commercial business will decrease its operating costs by about $10 million a year, although operating results for the rest of this year will be adversely affected by as much as $4.5 million in severance payments and other charges.
Ramius, predictably, denounces the move, questions the sale of the fibromyalgia drug to Forest, and demands to review documents related to the marketing agreement.
In a statement issued yesterday, Ramius Partner Managing Director Jeffrey C. Smith, says, “This is just another prime example of the Board failing to exercise its fiduciary responsibility to represent the best interest of all shareholders. Rather than rushing to dispose of the Co-Promote, the Board should have considered its potential strategic value to an acquirer and determined how best to maximize its value.”
Smith concludes by calling on Cypress to “halt all extraordinary transactions.” A spokesman for Ramius declined to comment today, but hinted there is more news to come.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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