WILMINGTON, Del. – A lawsuit by a group of Caremark Rx Inc. investors today succeeded in delaying a shareholder vote on CVS Corp.’s $25.7 million offer, Bloomberg News said.
With the Caremark vote previously set for next Tuesday, Feb. 20, and the CVS vote for Friday, Feb. 23, the deal might have closed this month.
But now Delaware Chancery Court judge William Chandler has agreed to bar Caremark from holding a special shareholders’ meeting on the planned merger until at least March 9, to give investors time to consider the CVS bid, which was increased today.
CVS and Caremark this morning had announced that, if the deal were approved, Caremark shareholders would receive a post-merger dividend of $6 per share, three times the amount previously announced. Other terms of their November agreement remain unchanged: for each Caremark share, holders would receive 1.67 shares in the new CVS/Caremark.
The change increased the value of the CVS bid by 7 percent, to $25.7 billion, Bloomberg News said. Express Scripts Inc.’s highly leveraged rival bid is valued at $26.1 billion.
The Delaware court order came in a lawsuit brought by a Louisiana retirement fund.
Additional information about Caremark is available at www.caremark.com and www.cvscaremarkmerger.com.
