Valeant and investor

William Ackman have obtained a three-day trial to begin on October 6 in Delaware. The objective: to have the special meeting of Allergan shareholders moved up to mid-November from the December 18 date (see August 28, 2014 news clip).

 

At the meeting, shareholders will decide the fate of directors who oppose the hostile takeover bid by Valeant and Pershing Square.

 

Valeant and Ackman believe that Allergan chose the December 18 date to give it time to find an alternative deal. They argue that Allergan had no intention of calling the special meeting, an argument that Judge Andre Bouchard accepted in his decision.

 

Allergan continues to maintain that the December 18 date was chosen to give the court in California time to render its verdict in the lawsuit against Pershing Square, Ackman’s hedge fund, for insider trading.

 

Pershing Square secretly began accumulating Allergan shares in February 2014. It disclosed its nearly 10% stake on April 21. The next day, Valeant and Pershing Square announced their hostile takeover bid. Allergan’s shares were pushed higher and the value of Pershing Square’s stake in the company rose to $1 billion.

 

If Pershing Square loses its case, it will not be allowed to vote at Allergan’s special meeting, which is why it wants the meeting date bumped up. Stay tuned…

 

Source: http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=USKBN0GR1RT20140827

Rumours over the past few weeks that Andrea Guerra was leaving Luxottica have been confirmed: he has stepped down as the company’s CEO. Luxottica will be headed by two co-CEOs with complementary responsibilities.

 

Outgoing Guerra held the position of CEO for ten years. He will receive a $14.2 million exit package, in addition to almost $850,000 in exchange for waiving any claim or right towards Luxottica. He will also receive $1.1 million related to a con-competition agreement, lasting two years, which includes a clause prohibiting him from soliciting employees of Luxottica.

 

Enrico Cavatorta, Luxottica’s current chief financial officer and general manager, has been appointed interim CEO of Markets, while the company looks for a candidate to take over on a permanent basis.

 

Massimo Vian will head up Operations and, for now, will report to an executive committee lead by Luxottica founder Leonardo Del Vecchio, who has returned to a more active role at the age of 79.

 

“The evolution to a co-CEO leadership structure with distinct and complementary responsibilities will ensure stronger management of the Group, which has rapidly increased its size, complexity and global presence in recent years,” said the company in a press release.

 

Allergan will hold a Special Meeting of Stockholders on December 18, 2014 to discuss the hostile takeover bid by Valeant and Pershing Square Capital.

 

The meeting was demanded by some shareholders, including Pershing Square, which holds 9.7% of Allergan’s capital. Shareholders will be asked whether they want to oust directors who oppose the merger with Valeant.

 

The Board of Directors continues to maintain that the offer greatly underestimates its real value. The company just posted the strongest quarterly sales in its history and plans to reduce its costs by approximately $475 M in 2015 compared to its previous strategic plan. It is predicting compound annual growth of earnings per share of more than 20% over the next five years.

 

In order to counter Pershing Square’s influence within its own ranks, Allergan filed a lawsuit against Pershing under the Federal Securities Act regarding the purchase of Allergan shares. This happened barely a few weeks before the company joined Valeant in the hostile takeover bid. If Allergan’s request for an injunction, filed in California, is accepted, Pershing Square will not be allowed to vote at the special meeting.

 

On another front, Allergan’s discussions surrounding the purchase of pharmaceutical company Salix seem to be at a standstill. By buying Salix, Allergan would increase its value to a level that would make a buyout by Valeant difficult.

 

Word count:

Sources:

http://agn.client.shareholder.com/releaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=867860

http://agn.client.shareholder.com/releaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=867446

http://eyewiretoday.com/view.asp?20140822-allergan_talks_to_buy_salix_in_defense_move_said_to_be_dormant

 

 

 

Tissot Medical Research and the University of Lausanne (EPFL) continue to improve their contact lens for the detection of glaucoma.

 

The Swiss researchers’ project is to develop a lens that is capable of measuring intraocular pressure continuously for 24 hours. This would correct the errors that arise from the current method, which can only measure pressure at a precise moment.

 

The lenses are composed of silicone and equipped with sensors that measure the variations in pressure with each blink of the eyes, using a bump that presses against the cornea when the eyelid closes. This causes the electrodes to come closer together. Small antennas attached to the patient’s glasses capture the information.

 

By measuring the eye’s resistance to the pressure from blinking, it is possible to collect valuable information about the patient’s intraocular pressure. “After 24 hours, ophthalmologists plug a USB key into the housing and analyze the results,” says the director of the Electronics and Signal Processing Laboratory at EPFL.

 

The smart lens could also help in adjusting the patient’s treatment by measuring the biomechanical properties of the cornea.

 

Although it is not yet on the market, this lens already has competition. Sensimed, a start-up also based at EPFL, has developed a different version based on a technology that analyzes the changes in the circumference of the cornea.

Sources:

http://actu.epfl.ch/news/une-lentille-de-contact-pour-depister-le-glaucome/

http://www.acuite.fr/articles.asp?REF=9909

 

Many people need corrective lenses to see an image or read a text on a screen. So what if we could correct the display instead of the viewer’s vision?

 

That’s what researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are working on. They’re developing computer algorithms to compensate for an individual’s visual impairment and produce a custom-made image for that person. “Instead of relying on optics to correct your vision, we use computation,” explained Fu-Chung Huang, a Berkeley researcher.

 

This approach could potentially help hundreds of millions of people who currently need corrective lenses to see their screens, but especially patients with high order aberrations that cannot be corrected with glasses or contact lenses.

 

In their prototype, the researchers inserted a printed pinhole screen sandwiched between two layers of clear plastic into an iPod display. The tiny pinholes were 75 micrometres each and spaced 390 micrometres apart. By adjusting the intensity of the light emanating from each pixel in each direction, the researchers were able to create an image corresponding to the user’s visual impairment.

 

“Our technique distorts the image such that, when the intended user looks at the screen, the image will appear sharp to that particular viewer. But if someone else were to look at the image, it would look bad,” said Brian Barsky, a Berkeley professor.

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140729152921.htm