Allergan (AGN) Will Have To Pay $15M For This Wrongdoing

A unit of Allergan will have to shell out $15 million as a penalty after U.S. regulators accused the botox company unit of failing to disclose 2014 merger talks with Actavis.

In a statement on Tuesday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said that the disclosure failures occurred in the months after the company received a tender offer from Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and co-bidder Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund run by Bill Ackman.

Ackman and Valeant had persisted for seven months to take over Allergan, who resisted, and it was in November of 2014 that the company announced it had accepted a $66 billion takeover bid from Actavis.

According to the SEC, Allergan previously told investors that Valeant’s bid was inadequate and that it was not in merger talks and that Allergan did have merger talks with an unnamed North Carolina company that it never disclosed.

The SEC says that after those talks didn’t succeed, Allergan did not provide time disclosures about its talks with Actavis.

Allergan Plc spokesman Mark Marmur said the company’s wholly owned subsidiary, Allergan Inc, agreed as part of the settlement not to engage in future violations and that the SEC had not accused the subsidiary of any intentional wrongdoing.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Allergan (NYSE: AGN) and have not been compensated for this article.