Unilife is incorporated in the state of Delaware In the late...

Unilife is incorporated in the state of Delaware


In the late eighties the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of state takeover laws, the most important being Delaware's merger moratorium law. This law prohibits a hostile acquirer from formally merging with the target for at least three years after buying a controlling interest. Widely regarded as a major deterrent, the Delaware law has an exception if the hostile bidder can acquire more than 85 percent of the target's stock, excluding shares held by inside managers and by certain kinds of employee stock-ownership plans. Since the law passed, Delaware-incorporated companies (which account for the majority of medium-size and large public companies in the United States) have engaged in various kinds of transactions to "lock up" more than 15 percent of stock in friendly hands,
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/TakeoversandLeveragedBuyouts.html

According to the unilife corporation indicative top 20 cdi holders issued by the company on 18january 2010
15.12% of the company is held by the following
Roger Williamson 3.24%
Merkaba limited 3.85%
Alan Shortall 4.63%
Joseph Kaal 2.16%
Craig Thorley 1.24%

Merbaka limited was acknowledged by Roger Williamson to be a company controlled by him and registered in a tax haven
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/16/1073878029876.html?from=storyrhs
Roger Williamson is difficult to contact leading to the speculation that he is in fact Alan Shortall whether this is true or not cannot really be proven however what is true is that if he is not Alan Shortall he would appear to rely heavily on Alan

In answer to a question on takeovers at the AGM Alan revealed the agreement with Sanofi Aventis has a ratchet clause whereby in the event of a takeover offer S A has to be notified and will come back with a counter offer and if the other company makes a further offer SA can come back again. Also at the request of Sanofi Aventis Alan Shorthall has a contract with the company that requires him to be employed as ceo for two years after a takeover. He would no doubt be feeling somewhat annoyed at having the company taken from him.


This places present incumbents in the prefill market in an awkward position . The method of gaining approval to distribute a prefill drug is to gain approval in the syringe therefore even if the present incumbents can produce a ready to fill syringe equal to or better than the Unilife one the pharmaceutical companies are likely to continue using Unilife for the present drugs and move to the new syringes for new medicines. It is going to be very difficult and time consuming to produce such a syringe without breaking unilife patents

These hurdles are such that for any takeover to succeed we the current shareholders will be well and truly rewarded