Private Equity is big market money. Let's examine the involvement here:
1. Cinven. A large Private Equity player in the UK. Purchased the various drugs through Amdipharm and Mercury and "packaged" the bunch to sell to Concordia at highly over inflated price. The share price of Concoridia had already started to tank from its summer 2015 highs fo $100+ per share, when some key insiders sold at near highs, but that was the "beginning of the end". Cinven, being a big private equity market player agreed to lock up provisions on its shares but also built in some safeguard and hold-backs to the AMCO deed through well crafted "earn-outs" which have yet to be paid by Concordia. Hence AMCO has a real risk of reverting back to private equity with shareholders getting nothing since failure to pay the earn-out gives AMCo back to Cinven debt free which is extremely attractive to private equity.
2. Various rumours surfaced during this year of potential suitors to purchase Concordia. All of these suitors, without exception were....... private equity.
A. Blacktone - private equity
Link to Bloomberg on PE "not interested"
B. Carlyle - private equity
C. Apollo also "apparently" had been interested but none of these were confirmed
Press gives anonymous "people close to the matter" a voice Apollo you ask? Correct, not a pharma company, it's private equity!
All of these suitors were appearently found by
Greenhill & Co. a company hired by Concordia to find a suitor.
Unfortunately, the only thing that was found was unsubstantiated interest fueled by well placed rumours on credible news outliets like Wall Street Journal, Reuters and Bloomberd.
This was in fact a pure market head fake to prop up share prices as the dumping of common shares by various insiders.
The dumping continues with no insider buying, just dumping to new shareholders unaware of the history of this company and the private equity games that have dominated this stock through management.
Pirate Equity at its best!