U.K. billionaire nets 730% gain on stock behind U.S. charges
financialpost.comBritish billionaire Joe Lewis has exited his stake in a biotechnology firm at the centre of the United States insider-trading case in which he pleaded guilty this week, cementing an eight-fold gain.
Boxer Capital, the firm for Lewis’s biotech investments, offloaded 6.9 million shares in Mirati Therapeutics Inc. on Tuesday when Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s acquisition of the cancer drugmaker closed, according to a regulatory filing. The stock was worth about US$400 million based on the acquisition price of US$58 per share.
That price is about 730 per cent higher than when Mirati started trading in the U.S. in July 2013, the month after Boxer Capital surfaced as a shareholder in the San Diego, California-based firm. Bristol-Myers’ all-cash deal valued Mirati at US$4.8 billion and bought out all remaining shareholders of the drugmaker.
Lewis and a trust for his family owned about 90 per cent of Boxer Capital’s Mirati shares, with the balance controlled by executives at the firm.
Boxer Capital’s latest sales came the day before Lewis pleaded guilty to passing inside corporate information to his private pilots and girlfriend, putting a black mark on the 86-year-old investor’s otherwise remarkable rise from London’s East End to one of the richest people in the United Kingdom.
Mirati was one of several companies U.S. federal prosecutors cited in the indictment, which accused him of abusing access to corporate boardrooms and concealing his investments. As part of a plea deal disclosed Wednesday that will likely reduce any sentence for Lewis, his company Broad Bay also pleaded guilty to securities fraud and agreed to pay a US$50 million fine.
There’s no suggestion of wrongdoing in the latest share sales by Lewis, who has a net
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