Dec. 18 Quick Takes: Illumina to divest Grail

More than two-and-a-half years after the FTC and European Commission started their review of the $8 billion acquisition of Grail Inc. by Illumina Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN), the NGS supplier is abandoning its efforts to hold on to the early cancer detection company after its latest judicial challenge failed in a U.S. court. Illumina said it will divest Grail following the Dec. 15 opinion by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found there was substantial evidence to support the FTC’s ruling that the deal was anticompetitive. This followed an October decision from the EC that ordered Illumina to unwind the deal.

In the past year, Illumina has been beset by activist pressure, which has led to the departure of both Chairman John Thompson in May and CEO Francis deSouza in June. Since the announcement that Illumina would be acquiring Grail in September 2020, Illumina shares are down 63%, while the XBI is down 27% over the same period. Illumina said in a statement that it would finalize the terms of the divestiture, either through a sale to a third party or a listing on the capital markets, by the end of 2Q24...