Roundup, deals, acquisitions

EMC, Cubist, and Others Do Some Last-Minute Shopping, Dyax Readies for an Offering, Millennium Sees a Payday, and More

Rebecca Zacks 1/2/08

It’s been relatively quiet since last we rounded up (on Christmas Eve), but a few local tech companies managed to ink a deal or two—mainly acquisitions—in the waning hours of 2007.

—Dyax (NASDAQ: DYAX) filed a shelf registration statement that, when declared effective by the SEC, will give the Cambridge, MA-based biotech the ability to sell up to $100 million in stock and other securities.

—Southborough, MA-based data-recovery company Double-Take Software (NASDAQ: DBTK) acquired TimeSpring, a Montreal-based data-protection software firm, for $8.3M in cash.

—Medical device firm NeuroMetrix of Waltham, MA, acquired the assets of EyeTel Imaging for $9.9 million in stock and $175,000 in cash. The deal gives NeuroMetrix ownership of EyeTel’s DigiScope technology for detecting diabetic retinopathy and other eye diseases.

—Lexington, MA’s Cubist Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: CBST) exercised its option to buy Seattle’s Illumigen Biosciences. The deal, originally announced in October, gives Illumigen $9 million in cash and up to some $330 million in milestone payments.

—In the latest in a string of acquisitions that has included backup-services provider Mozy and network-management firm Voyence, Hopkinton, MA’s EMC (NYSE: EMC) forged an agreement to acquire Document Sciences Corporation (NASDAQ: DOCX) for some $85 million in cash. The Carlsbad, CA, firm, a maker of document output management software, will be run as a business unit within EMC’s Content Management and Archiving division.

—Millennium Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: MLNM) said it met 2007 milestones for sales of its drug Velcade that entitle the Cambridge, MA-based biotech to a $40 million payment from Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ortho Biotech Products.