Over the weekend, Pfizer finally made an official offer for AstraZeneca,  by raising its bid to $119B (15% higher than the last, unofficial, offer), and increasing the cash portion of the deal from 33% to 45%.  AZ had a market cap of about $74B at the end of 2013, and about $80B right before the Pfizer offer became public, so the current offer is at a premium of about 50-60%.  Such an offer will be enticing to some shareholders, but is starting to look expensive, for a conventional acquisition.  Of course, this isn’t a conventional deal.  Stay tuned…

[update] AstraZeneca’s board quickly responded “no”, and by UK law Pfizer can’t officially raise their bid before the deal deadline.  After that passes, there is a 6 month window during which Pfizer can’t bid again. As a consequence, AZ’s shares are down more than 10% (and some of their investors aren’t happy with the board’s decision).

I don’t think Pfizer will give up that easily, however.