Morgan Stanley Comments on Higher Bid for Illumina

Morgan Stanley has published a research report on Illumina

commenting on the company's increased offer from Roche of $51/share. In the report, Morgan Stanley writes, "With this new bid, Roche (covered by Peter Verdult) hopes to open negotiations with the company and have its slate of 4 directors win nomination to the BoD (on a 9 member BoD) at the upcoming 4/18 meeting. Gaining such BoD participation is critical to change the BoD dynamics and increase the company's leverage to open negotiations with Illumina, thus improving prospects for a friendly transaction in the months to follow." Morgan Stanley maintains its Equal-weight on Illumina, which is currently trading up $2.08 from yesterday's $49.88 closing price.