Irvine-based drug maker Allergan Inc. may be mulling an offer for specialty-pharmaceuticals company Obagi Medical Products Inc. in Long Beach.
That’s according to the website SeekingAlpha. Allergan spokesperson Bonnie Jacobs declined to comment.
Talk of an Obagi takeover flared up recently after Obagi shareholders voted down a poison pill shareholder-rights plan by a 3-1 margin.
“There has been considerable buzz for a few months now that several offers for the company were turned away without being properly considered by (Obagi) management,” SeekingAlpha reported.
Obagi’s management owns just 0.67% of the company’s stock.
Selling Obagi “would result in most of management losing their high-paying jobs with little compensation in return,” the website article said.
Other potential Obagi acquirers include Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Medicis Pharmaceutical Corp. and Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., a Canadian company with Orange County roots.
A representative of German investment bank Berenberg recently told Bloomberg that Obagi—which focuses primarily on skin-care products—is likely to attract “quality bid offers.”
Few companies in Obagi’s category “offer the correct mix of scale, fit, ‘buzz,’ synergy potential to attract interest from major industry players,” according to Berenberg.
Obesity Fighter
San Clemente-based ReShape Medical Inc. has raised $1.5 million in financing, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
ReShape, which makes obesity treatments, did not disclose the transaction’s round or its investors’ identities in the filing.
ReShape is developing a nonsurgical, dual-balloon medical device that occupies existing space in a person’s stomach in order to reduce its capacity for food.
The company said the dual balloon is designed to maximize space occupation in the stomach and conform to the organ’s natural anatomy for efficacy and stability.
ReShape’s device is placed in the stomach during a 30-minute outpatient procedure using deep conscious sedation.
The dual balloon remains in a patient’s stomach for up to six months and is then removed.
The company’s leadership includes several Orange County-area device veterans.
Chairman Kenneth Charhut is a former executive of Baxter International Inc.’s cardiovascular division, which eventually evolved into Edwards Lifesciences Corp. Board member George Wallace also worked at the Baxter cardiovascular operation and co-founded Micro Therapeutics Inc., an Irvine company that was bought by Ev3 Inc., which is now in turn part of Covidien PLC.
Telehealth
St. Joseph Health, a Catholic hospital operator located in Orange, gave an update on its pilot “telehealth program” recently.
St. Joseph uses Cisco HealthPresence technology, which allows patients, doctors and other health and wellness professionals in disparate locations to meet and consult virtually via immersive video and audio technologies. The hospital system started collaborating with AT&T in early 2011 on the projects.
Twenty-six providers and a psychiatrist have seen about 250 patients at the two sites since February.
The sites offer core services such as urgent care, access to certain specialties and chronic disease management.
The telehealth project is part of St. Joseph Health’s Healthiest Communities initiative, which is aimed at improving healthcare service access and quality.
Bits and Pieces
Irvine medical device maker Edwards Lifesciences Corp. said the Food and Drug Administration gave it conditional investigational device exemption approval to start a clinical trial to study its GLX tissue treatment applied to a surgical bovine pericardial heart valve. … GLX allows for packaging and sterilization in a dry condition, which eliminates the need to rinse the valve before implanting. … Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley and Saddleback Memorial Medical Center, with campuses in Laguna Hills and San Clemente, received an A safety rating from the Leapfrog Group, a San Francisco-based nonprofit run by employers and other large buyers of health benefits. … MemorialCare Health System in Fountain Valley owns the three facilities. UCI Medical Center, an Orange teaching hospital, also received an A safety score from Leapfrog. … SurgiCount Medical Inc., the wholly owned operating subsidiary of Irvine-based Patient Safety Technologies Inc., received a contract from Brentwood, Tenn.-based HealthTrust Purchasing Group LP to sell its SurgiCount device to member hospitals. SurgiCount is designed to reduce incidents of sponges left in patients after surgery.
