Drayson could net £65m from fresh PowderJect bid

Paul Drayson, the controversial Labour Party donor, and his family are set to make a £65m windfall if his vaccines company, PowderJect Pharmaceuticals, succumbs to a takeover approach.

PowderJect said yesterday it was in talks that might lead to an offer which – although not officially announced yet – is understood to have come from Chiron, the US group which had a lower bid rejected by the company last November.

Chiron is believed to have made an informal offer of about 540p a share, valuing PowderJect at £500m. The new approach, which was made last week, is 20 per cent higher than last year's bid. The US group is attempting to win backing from the PowderJect board for an agreed deal. It is keen to acquire PowderJect, which sells flu vaccine in the US and would complement Chiron's own flu business in Europe.

Mr Drayson – who courted controversy with two £500,000 donations to the Labour Party before PowderJect won a £32m smallpox vaccine contract from the Government – controls 7 per cent of the shares himself while the total family holding is 13 per cent. He split the role of chairman and chief executive in February in an attempt to ease concerns over corporate governance at the company which he founded in 1993 based on needle-free injection technology developed by his father-in-law.

The company switched its focus to vaccines through a string of judicious acquisitions that turned it into one of the UK's few profitable biotechs. It made a profit of £19.3m in the six months to last August, thanks to record sales of its flu vaccine, Fluvirin.

PowderJect shares jumped 7 per cent to 516.5p yesterday on confirmation it had received an approach, although the company insisted it was made "recently" and sources played down speculation it was close to an agreed deal. Analysts were also cautious on the chances of PowderJect's bankers, CSFB, being able to generate an auction. Richard Parkes of ING Financial Markets said: "We were expecting a bidding war last October but it never materialised."

Mr Drayson is known to be reluctant to sell out, and had been pursuing merger and acquisition opportunities of PowderJect's own.