“We were as dumbfounded as anyone else was who observed it from the outside,” Ornskov said in a telephone interview yesterday. “Their loss is our gain.”
The two companies this week said they had
agreed to terminate the deal, which would have been the biggest tax inversion to date. Additional meetings between Shire and AbbVie managers were scheduled when Shire’s board of directors was told that North Chicago, Illinois-based AbbVie’s board would meet to discuss changing its recommendation to shareholders. That decision followed U.S. Treasury Department changes to tax rules made the transaction less appealing.
“Tax was an important part of this consideration; it certainly had nothing to do with Shire,” Ornskov said. “They were incredibly impressed as they looked at us during the integration.”
Ornskov said that while he would prefer Dublin-based Shire to remain independent, further takeover approaches are possible. He’s focused on making the company “as attractive as possible” as he pursues a goal of doubling sales to $10 billion by 2020, he said.
Right Thing
“I know my colleagues won’t want to hear this, but it could happen in future, and I want to follow the same streamlined approach,” Ornskov said. “We make the best case for our independence, but in the end the shareholders decide and in the end we want to do the right thing for the shareholders.”He declined to comment on whether other companies have approached Shire and whether Allergan Inc. may be interested. Allergan of Irvine, California, is among drugmakers that may approach Shire, analysts have said.
The CEO, who took over in May last year, said he will continue seeking deal opportunities to grow Shire and has no plans to split Shire’s rare diseases and neuroscience businesses.
“I don’t see any need specifically to disaggregate a great company,” he said. Ornskov bought 15,500 ordinary shares at an average price of 40.42 pounds apiece, and now holds 37,500 shares, the company said yesterday in a statement.
Some shareholders have called and e-mailed Ornskov to express their support after the AbbVie deal collapsed, he said.
“The message is just, get back to what you and your team did before,” Ornskov said. “I’m really pleased with that.”
What Ornskov also said he feels good about now is the fact that he remained focused on the business throughout the AbbVie takeover process.
Gas Pedal
“Not that I anticipated this would ever happen, but other people in my situation could have taken their foot off the gas pedal; I didn’t do that,” he said. “I kept all the meetings going. I kept meeting with my leadership team. I kept increasing the targets and the goals for my team.”His colleagues worked as hard as he did to keep the company going and there was no disruption in everyday business while the AbbVie deal was pending, Ornskov said.
Shire employees “did double duty,’ he said. ‘‘They were working their daytime job and there was an enormous amount of integration activity going on’’ on top of that, Ornskov said.
Those efforts are paying off. The company yesterday raised its 2014 profit forecast for the third time this year, reporting quarterly earnings that beat analysts’ estimates.
Ornskov ‘‘walked the halls here in Boston,’’ where he and most of the senior management team are based, this week to talk to employees and make sure everything was all right, he said. Several employees wrote him to thank him for his openness and transparency in discussing the failed transaction.
‘‘The mood is fine,’’ he said. ‘‘People say that happens and they are looking out for the future. The fact that we have such a bright future, of course, helps us. We will quickly get over this.’’
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