Galapagos declares the offer for BioFocus unconditional as to acceptances

“We are very pleased with this acceptance level and look forward to realizing the synergies of the enlarged group”, said Onno van de Stolpe, Chief Executive Officer of Galapagos. “In our opinion, the acceptance level of the offer, combined with the favourable reaction of the financial markets and analysts, are a strong endorsement for the strategic rationale to combine the two companies and create an integrated drug discovery engine.”
 
BioFocus plc (AiM: BIO) is a leading drug discovery company with expertise in chemistry, lead discovery and lead optimisation.  Galapagos’ core expertise lies in the ability to discover and identify novel drug targets. The combination of the two companies would provide a broad range of services – from target discovery to the optimisation of drug candidates – as well as accelerate the progress of Galapagos’ own internal drug discovery programs in bone and joint diseases.
 
Key figures and dates:
 
  •         Acceptances received for 76.9% of total BioFocus issued share capital as at 12 October 2005
  •         Applications made to London Stock Exchange for admission on AiM and to Euronext for admission of offer shares on Eurolist
  •         Issue up to 3,960,646 offer shares in Galapagos NV based on an exchange rate of 0.225 Galapagos share for each BioFocus share
  •         When Issued trading on AiM expected to begin 17 October 2005
  •         Admission to trading on Eurolist expected to begin 18 October 2005
  •         Admission to trading of Galapagos shares on AiM expected to begin 20 October 2005
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    For further details on the acceptance of the offer and admission to trading, please see today’s earlier press release: “Galapagos NV: Recommended Offer for BioFocus plc Declared Unconditional as to Acceptances.”
     
    About Galapagos
    Galapagos is a publicly traded, genomics-based drug discovery company (Euronext Brussels, GLPG; Euronext Amsterdam, GLPGA) that has successfully discovered and validated novel targets in the bone and joint diseases – osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as in asthma and Alzheimer’s disease. Proprietary targets and compounds resulting from these programs are used for Galapagos’ internal drug discovery programs, combined with selected out-licensing and partnering of projects during development. The combination of BioFocus and Galapagos would offer a full suite of drug discovery services to pharmaceutical and biotech companies, encompassing target discovery through to delivery of pre-clinical candidates. In addition, the combined entity will provide adenoviral reagents for rapid identification and validation of novel drug targets and compound libraries for screening. Galapagos and BioFocus combined currently employ 193 people, including 74 PhDs, and occupy facilities in Saffron Walden, UK, Mechelen, Belgium, and Leiden, The Netherlands. The partners of the combined entity would include Amgen, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Celgene, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Organon, Serono, Vertex, and Wyeth.  More information about Galapagos can be found at www.glpg.com.  More information about BioFocus can be found at www.biofocus.com.