Wellcome prepares to hear its fate
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Your support makes all the difference.Wellcome and its largest staff union, the MSF, have separately submitted written evidence for a hearing in the High Court tomorrow that will decide whether the company's biggest shareholder, the Wellcome Trust, can sell its stake to Glaxo.
The Trust has said that, with court approval, and in the absence of a higher bid, which is yet to emerge, it will give an irrevocable undertaking to accept a cash and shares offer from Glaxo for its stake.
The union submission is part of a last-ditch effort to halt the £9bn takeover that also included the posting yesterday of a letter to the European Commission about its concerns for jobs.
The unexpected Wellcome submission is understood to be an attempt to ensure that any irrevocable agreement with Glaxo that the court permits does not preclude the Trust accepting a higher offer if a white knight bidder can be found.
It is not thought that Wellcome is trying to prevent approval of the sale, which would send its shares plunging, and which anyway could be construed as frustrating action under Takeover Panel rules.
According to the MSF, the sale of the 39.5 per cent stake could be in contravention of the terms of the will of Wellcome founder Henry Wellcome, under which the Trust was created.
According to a union spokesman, the will devoted several pages to the treatment of staff in the long term and spelled out its central insistence that the Trust's income should be devoted to medical research.
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