Cypress management to enhance the value of the company’s pipeline assets,” says Royalty Pharma CEO Pablo Legorreta in the same statement. “As the leading investor in biopharmaceutical royalties, we have a long history of working in partnerships with biotech companies and their management teams.”
Cypress acquired the exclusive rights to milnacipran (Savella) for any purpose in the United States and Canada in 2003 from Pierre Fabre, the French specialty drugmaker. Milnacipran was first approved in France for the treatment of depression. Cypress went on later, in January 2009, to win FDA clearance along with Forest Laboratories to start selling the drug for the treatment of fibromyalgia. Cypress announced in August that it was ending its commercial business, including milnacipran, as part of a reorganization. But the company retained its rights to milnacipran.
Daniel Petree, the lead independent director at Cypress, says the board spent more than two months conducting a comprehensive evaluation of the company’s strategic alternatives. “After thorough and extensive analysis with our financial advisors, Cypress’ Board unanimously concluded that this transaction with Ramius and Royalty Pharma provides significant cash value to our stockholders and is in the best interests of our stockholders, customers and employees.”
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.
View all posts by Bruce V. Bigelow