Palm Beach, FL 1/12/12 (StreetBeat) – Shares of Omnicare Inc. (NYSE: OCR) and PharMerica Corp. (NYSE: PMC) tumbled Thursday morning on news reports that Omnicare’s proposed acquisition of its Louisville-based competitor may be a no-go with the Federal Trade Commission.Covington-based Omnicare was down nearly percent just before 10:30 a.m. to $33.29. PharMerica was down about 9 percent to $13.60.
The New York Post quoted an unnamed source Thursday saying the Obama administration appeared poised to block the $716 million deal and that a decision could be announced by the end of next week.
Andy Brimmer, a spokesman for Omnicare, told the Business Courier that his company was “declining to comment on speculation.”
Omnicare, with about $6 billion a year in revenue, embarked in August on a bid to buy PharMerica, which has $2 billion in revenue, for $15 a share. The companies are the two largest players in institutional pharmacy, the industry that provides pharmaceutical services for long-term-care facilities.
The New York Post reported that, according to its source, the Federal Trade Commission is not offering Omnicare any options for getting the acquisition approved.
Omnicare in September commenced a tender offer to purchase all outstanding shares of PharMerica’s common stock for $15 each. PharMerica’s board of directors had repeatedly rejected the offer.
The parties have continued to negotiate, and the Federal Trade Commission has collected information and investigated the proposed acquisition.
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