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| Perrigo CEO Joseph Pap |
If anyone was doubting just how much Perrigo ($PRGO) didn't want to be acquired by Mylan ($MYL) during 2015's hostile takeover battle, take a look at the bonuses the company doled out to the execs who helped fend off the unwanted suitor.
As the Dublin drugmaker outlined in its proxy statement, it lined the pockets of CEO Joseph Papa with restricted stock worth $1.5 million at the time of the award, as well as $500,000 in cash in recognition of his "key contributions related to Mylan's takeover attempt."
Papa wasn't the only one who netted rewards. In December, Perrigo green-lighted $375,000 worth of restricted stock for CFO Judy Brown and General Counsel Todd Kingma, with each of them netting a cash bonus worth the same amount, the company disclosed.
The trench war started last April, when Mylan made its first pass at Perrigo in what some industry-watchers think was a ploy to thwart its own hostile suitor, generics behemoth Teva ($TEVA). But even after Teva decided to go another direction--it left Mylan alone after inking a summer pact to buy Allergan's ($AGN) generics unit for $40.5 billion--Mylan pushed on, lobbying for a deal until Perrigo shareholders ultimately nixed its offer in a November vote.
That didn't stop Mylan from going after its M&A ambitions, though. It recently agreed to buy Sweden's Meda--a company that had also turned it down in the past--for $7.2 billion. With that transaction, it'll be able to bulk up in OTC, an area that it said it wanted to focus on with the potential Perrigo acquisition.
Meanwhile, Perrigo is now busy carrying through with the cost-cutting measures it enacted while trying to evade the generics giant. Last October, it laid out plans to slash 800 jobs, pare down its organizational structure to cut out redundancies, sell off its U.S. vitamins, minerals and supplements business and kick off a $2 billion share buyback plan.
- see the preliminary proxy filing
Special Report: Top 11 Fastest-Growing Generics Companies - Perrigo