Reuters is reporting that Goldman investment bankers are continuing to downplay the sale of Nycomed, citing the company’s unrealistic expectations, overvaluation and limited interested buyers.

Reuters is also saying that Nycomed now expects to have a partner for its COPD drug, Daxas (Roflumilast), a PDE4 inhibitor, by the end of June.

The news is a complete 180 from March, when Bloomberg and the WSJ said Nycomed was being valued at 10X earnings or about EUR 10B ($13B).

Economic reality must have hit hard because now Nycomed is saying it is confident it can find a partner for Daxas (read: no mention of a company sale). Nycomed spokeswoman Beatrix Benz said this:

“Daxas has drawn great interest from parties proposing to commercialize the drug in the United States. Nycomed is optimistic that an agreement can be finalized in the first half of the year, as planned. Nycomed is aiming for a stock market introduction at some stage, depending on timing and market conditions…But there is no target date set. Our immediate and primary objective remains to find a licensing partner for Daxas in the United States.”

According to Reuters, people familiar with the matter said that Goldman’s primary role was always to find a partner for Daxas.

Ummm, yeah.

We find that hard to believe. No one hires Goldman to do a licensing deal. Goldman does more lucrative, complex transactions – IPOs, M&A, etc. Wanna license your drug? Go to pharmalicensing or one of the 1000s of advisory/partnering/consulting companies out there.

Our thoughts: everyone realized the deal was overvalued and the time was “just not right.” We call BS and no partner by June.

Image from faithandaids

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