Announcing a sizeable acquisition three days after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy took nerve. Keeping shareholders on board while the deal was finalised was a huge test of investor communications.
Yet, while financial markets trembled across the globe, BTG, a specialist UK pharmaceuticals company, pressed ahead with an agreed £218m ($299m) all-share offer for Protherics. This deal, completed in December, meant that BTG, already the largest UK biotech group by market capitalisation, could gain greater scale and take drugs further down the development road, cornering a bigger share of the profits.
