The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether a surge in call option trading on 3Com shares just hours before the announcement that Hewlett-Packard would take over the Marlborough, MA-based networking equipment maker for $2.7 billion was a result of insider knowledge of the deal, Bloomberg and other outlets are reporting today. Trading in call options—which guarantee the right to acquire a stock at a certain price—hit a 26-month high on November 11, just before the after-hours announcement of the acquisition. That “screams insider trading to the SEC,” Wayne State University law professor and former SEC attorney Peter Henning told Bloomberg, whose report was based on information from an unnamed source inside the agency.

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New England tech and life sciences firms forged several interesting new partnerships this week.

—Apperian, a Boston-based startup developing enterprise-oriented iPhone applications, raised $1 million in a Series A venture round led by CommonAngels of Lexington, MA.

—Cambridge, MA-based Akamai (NASDAQ: AKAM) teamed with Seattle’s Delve Networks to provide a new online platform for publishing videos and distributing them to any digital media player. The new service will compete against that offered by Cambridge-based Brightcove.

—Cardiorobotics of Newport, RI, and Pittsburgh, PA, raised $11.6 million in a Series A round from Eagle Ventures, the Slater Technology Fund, the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, and others. Eric wrote a nice profile of the startup’s efforts to develop a “snake robot” that would make heart surgeries less invasive.

—Advanced Electron Beams of Worcester, MA, closed a Series C round of financing worth $14.2 million. Flagship Ventures led the deal, which was joined by return investors Agman Partners, Atlas Venture, GE, General Catalyst Partners, and RockPort Capital Partners.

—Cancer drug developer Ariad Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ARIA) of Cambridge netted $30.9 million in an offering of 19 million new shares of stock-–$3 million worth of which were purchased by CEO Harvey Berger.

—Boston-based data-storage firm Iron Mountain (NYSE:IRM) announced a planned notes offering worth $450 million.

—IT-focused venture firm Longworth Venture Partners of Waltham, MA, reportedly raised $122 million of a targeted $180 million for its third fund.

—Cambridge-based drug developer Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ALNY) inked a deal with Vancouver-based Tekmira Pharmaceuticals (TSX:TKM) to develop new particles to deliver RNA-interference drugs. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

—Idenix Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:IDIX), also of Cambridge, priced a secondary public offering of 7.25 million shares at $3.14 each. Idenix develops treatments for Hepatitis C.

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Worcester, MA-based World Energy, which runs online auctions for energy contracts as well as carbon emissions allowances, said today that its stock will be listed on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker symbol XWES. Since its 2006 IPO, the company has traded only on the Toronto Stock Exchange, under the system XWE. “Gaining increased exposure to the U.S. investment community through a listing on NASDAQ has always been part of World Energy’s capital markets strategy; I’m glad to say we have achieved this important milestone,” CEO Richard Domaleski said in a statement.

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Woodinville, WA-based Loud Technologies (NASDAQ: LTEC), a pro audio and music company, has announced it is delisting its common stock from NASDAQ, effective in February. Loud cited management time and costs to maintain the listing, limited trading, and its 2008 financial results as some of the reasons for the move.

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If you’re like me, you’re to the point where you can’t focus for more than two sentences without pausing to check FiveThirtyEight.com and Intrade, so I kept the roundup of Boston-area deals short this week.

—Battery Ventures of Waltham, MA, led a $17 million Series B round for Sunnyvale, CA-based ZeroG Wireless, a developer of low-power Wi-Fi chips. Morgenthaler Ventures and Greylock Partners participated in the deal as well.

—Andover, MA-based Helium, an online marketplace for writers, reportedly closed a $17 million Series A financing round and slashed its staff by roughly 30 percent, or 18 people. The cuts were distributed across engineering, customer service, and sales.

—Fairhaven Capital Partners, a spinoff of TD Capital in Cambridge, MA, closed its second investment fund with $250 million—$50 million more than it set out to raise. The firm plans to invest the money in early-stage technologies, as it did with its first fund.

—Newton, MA-based biotech firm Clinical Data (NASDAQ:CLDA) acquired Avalon Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:AVRX)of Germantown, MD, for $10 million.

—Video-hosting firm Brightcove of Cambridge, MA, inked a deal with AOL under which the media giant will manage all of its online video using the new Brightcove 3 platform starting in early 2009.

—Adding a bit of confusion to the digital-video space, one of Brightcove’s major suppliers, its Cambridge neighbor Akamai (NASDAQ: AKAM) forged an agreement with Microsoft to develop an adaptive streaming system for high-definition video that’s nearly identical to a service that will be included in the Brightcove 3 platform.

—Cambridge, MA-based HealthCare Ventures led a $28 million Series B round of financing for Trevose, PA-based InfaCare Pharmaceuticals. Atlas Venture, Longitude Capital, and FirstMark Capital joined the round.

—Drug developer Dyax (NASDAQ:[DYAX) of Cambridge, MA, inked an agreement under which investment fund Azimuth Opportunity will buy up to $50 million of its common stock over an 18-month period, Dyax reports. The money would help Dyax further the development of its lead drug DX-88 for hereditary angioedema.

—Watertown, MA-based EnVivo Pharmaceuticals, a developer of drugs for Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia, reportedly raised $65 million in a Series D venture financing from Boston-based Fidelity Biosciences. Fidelity also bought out all of EnVivo’s other investors, including BCM Technologies, Cogene Ventures, and NeuroVentures Capital, according to the report.

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There was not one venture financing among Boston-area life sciences firms that I could find this week, but plenty of news nonetheless.

—Luke took a look at Provasculon, the second company to be taken under Biogen Idec’s (NASDAQ: BIIB) wing at its Cambridge, MA-based incubator. Formed around research from Boston’s Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Provasculon is aiming to develop drugs that help stimulate the growth of new blood vessels after they’ve been damaged by a heart attack.

—Natick, MA-based Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX) went into PR-damage-control mode after co-founders Pete Nicholas and John Abele involuntarily sold off about 13 million of their shares of company stock in one day as part of an automatic share-selling plan. The company later explained that 31 million of Abele’s and Nicholas’ shares had been sold that week through the automatic plan, and that further sales were possible. Both founders expressed regret about the sales. Boston Scientific CEO James Tobin, meanwhile, exercised $2.1 million worth of options on company shares, reportedly as an “an expression of confidence in the company.”

—Luke orchestrated a conversation with Roger Tung, the CEO of Concert Pharmaceuticals, a Lexington, MA-based startup whose strategy of taking existing drugs and replacing a few of the hydrogen atoms with deuterium atoms has yielded potential treatments for menopausal hot flashes and HIV.

—Ryan checked in with Mark Benedyk, the new head of Pfizer’s (NYSE:PFE) incubator in La Jolla, CA. Though the previous incubator chief had made public comments about launching a second Pfizer incubator in the Boston area, Benedyk said he wants the incubator to be a virtual entity in markets outside of its San Diego base.

—Lexington, MA-based Synta Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SNTA) earned $25 million from GlaxoSmithKline for reaching milestones in development of the cancer drug elesclomol, which is in late-stage trials as a treatment for metastatic melanoma.

—RXi Pharmaceuticals obtained a worldwide license from the University of Massachusetts Medical School for technology for the oral delivery of treatments based on RNA interference. The Worcester, MA, firm, co-founded by the medical school’s Craig Mello, focuses exclusively on RNAi-based drugs.

—Biotech veteran Keith Dionne, the former CEO of Alantos Pharmaceuticals, took the reins as president and CEO of Boston’s Surface Logix, a privately held developer of small-molecule drugs.

—Cambridge, MA-based Targanta Therapeutics announced it has a date (November 19) to make the case to the FDA for approval of its antibiotic, oritavancin, for hard-to-treat skin infections. The FDA has until December 8 to review Targanta’s application for the drug, which would be its first marketed application.

—Biogen Idec found itself the subject of much debate when it denied the request of a dying cancer patient—a famous trial attorney and Democratic fund-raiser—for access to Tysabri, a drug currently only approved for treating multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease. Luke explained the complicated circumstances of the case, and the reasoning behind Biogen’s decision. Be sure to read readers’ comments as well; the discussion is getting really interesting.

—Wilmington, MA-based Charles River Laboratories International (NYSE:CRL) said it’s opening a 60,000-square-foot pre-clinical facility in Shanghai to support the global drug-development needs of its clients.

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Boston Scientific CEO James Tobin exercised $2.1 million worth of options on shares of the Natick, MA-based medical device firm yesterday as an “an expression of confidence in the company,” according to a report in the Boston Business Journal. The CEO’s purchase of 350,000 shares of Boston Scientific (NYTS:BSX) stock at $6.13 per share followed on the heels of co-founders Pete Nicholas and John Abele’s involuntary sale of about about 13 million shares as part of an automatic selling plan. Shares of Boston Scientific are trading at $7.31 at around 1:00 pm EST; the 52-week low for the stock is $8.10.

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Yesterday was a dark day on Wall Street, and, according to many observers, a dark day for our political system. But what does the financial crisis mean for innovation, and what are the key things that investors, entrepreneurs, and big companies should do or not do during such an upheaval? Xconomy asked this question of a panel of our Xconomists, and also asked what the crisis likely means for each of their specific fields.

The responses have been pouring in. You can click a name below to jump to that person’s response, or simply page through the whole post. And we’ll be updating this post frequently as more Xconomists are heard from, so check back from time to time.

• Michael Greeley
• Clay Siegall
• Michael Schrage
• Chris Gabrieli
• Ken Morse
• James Geshwiler
• Bill Aulet
• Martin Simonetti

Michael Greeley (9/29/08)

Staggering. There is no other way to characterize what we just witnessed. Our elected officials in Congress just put themselves in front of the collective national good. I am sure that their philosophical differences are real but today was a day for compromise. Many millions of investors around the world just spoke—and they did so very loudly. While flawed, the bail-out was a critical first step in what will be a long difficult recovery and it should have passed. There will be significant job losses; many companies will go bankrupt as they struggle to access credit to fund basic operations, much less expansion.

So where does that leave the “innovation economy?” Arguably battered and bruised, but like Rocky, it will answer the bell. Venture capitalists are obviously concerned—less about the losses today in the public markets than what that implies for how long they will need to support a portfolio of private companies that require on-going funding as these companies build their products, develop new markets. Any plans we had for liquidity were suspended months ago. VCs have been focused on building valuable private companies for generations—so now we just need to hold on to them a few years longer. Over many investment cycles it has been proven time and again that investments in innovation outstrip returns investors can get elsewhere.

The bar has been set even higher for the funding of new investments—but expect that there will continue to be investment activity, especially in the early stage marketplace. Entrepreneurs will most likely be asked to take less capital and focus on near-term milestones. Venture-backed companies will be asked to look at aggressive cost-cutting scenarios to understand worst-case scenarios. And VCs will re-evaluate their reserve policies across their portfolios to ensure that existing investments will be adequately supported. Unfortunately for those under-performing companies, expect to see less investor patience and a higher mortality rate than we might see in less volatile times.

Clay Siegall (9/30)

I have experienced a few financial downturns, most recently post-9/11 which lasted into 2003. At times like these, it is important to focus on what you do best, while being careful to utilize the resources that you need, not those that you want. I have observed that most truly innovative ideas come from individuals or small teams that can ask and answer questions rapidly.

For entrepreneurs, financial uncertainty forces efforts to be streamlined. This is often when the best concepts arise as great innovators are excited by and step up to challenges much as great athletes reach deep within themselves to achieve peak performance. Above all, don’t follow others during a downturn as that is a sure way to halt innovation and progress.

Investors should take positions with companies that have a diversified product portfolio and strong balance sheet. It is times like now in which investors …Next Page »

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Newton, MA-based biotech firm Clinical Data (NASDAQ:CLDA) said today that it has inked a deal to raise some $25 million in a private placement of stock and warrants. The agreement, with affiliates of Clinical Data board chair Randal J. Kirk, includes some 1.5 million newly issued shares of common stock and warrants on another 757,000 shares.

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Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: VRTX) announced that the underwriters of its stock offering have exercised their option to purchase 1.1 million additional shares, bringing the overall size of the deal to 8.6 million shares worth a total of $220.0 million. The Cambridge, MA-based developer of the hepatitis C drug telaprevir last week priced 7.5 million shares at $25.50 apiece, for a total of $191.3 million.

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Cell Therapeutics said today its board has authorized a 1-for-10 reverse stock split, meaning that shareholders will get one share of common stock in exchange for 10 they own. The Seattle-based biotech company (NASDAQ: CTIC) said the change will take effect Aug. 31. The move was made primarily to regain compliance with Nasdaq listing requirements, the company said. Shares of Cell Therapeutics fell 2 cents to 25 cents at 10:57 a.m. Eastern time today.

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On the up side, the IPO drought was broken by a New England company. On the down side, the stock took a bit of a tumble. That and the rest of last week’s deals news below.

—GT Solar (NASDAQ: SOLR) raised about $500 million for its parent company, which sold 30.3 million shares of the Merrimack, NH-based manufacturer of solar panel production equipment in the first PE-backed IPO since the end of the first quarter. Shares closed the week at $12.59, however, down 24 percent from their debut price of $16.50.

—Tech luminaries Esther Dyson and Tim O’Reilly were among the seed-stage backers of Good Data, a Cambridge, MA-based business intelligence software startup. Good Data founder and CEO Roman Stanek and New York-based VC firm Windcrest Partners also participated in the $2 million deal.

—Biofuel and biochemical developer BioEnergy International of Quincy, MA, bought the assets of Cambridge, MA-based OmniGene Bioproducts; financial terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed.

—Accretive Exit Capital, a secondary private equity firm based in Boston and West Palm Beach, FL, closed its first fund, totaling $125 million. Accretive said it raised the money in just 45 days.

—Cambridge, MA-based CambridgeSoft raised $21 million from New York-based Goldman, Sachs & Co. The company provides management and database software for biotech, pharmaceutical, and chemical firms.

—Stealthy currency-trading startup Tradual of Boston reportedly collected $2.4 million of a $4 million Series A funding round led by Waltham, MA-based North Bridge Venture Partners.

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The long-delayed initial public offering for Merrimack, NH-based GT Solar International is scheduled to go forward on Thursday—and so many investors are interested in the company that the offering is already oversubscribed, according to Ben Holmes, publisher at research firm Morningnotes.

The stock will trade on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker symbol SOLR. According to Morningnotes’ research, it will debut in the price range of $15.50 to $17.50 per share, potentially raising $470 million to $530 million for the company, which makes equipment for manufacturing photovoltaic panels and has landed some big contracts recently. The company dusted off and expanded its long dormant plan to go public on July 7 after first filing for an IPO in April 2007.

Morningnotes reported today based on information gathered from the deal’s underwriters—who include Credit Suisse, UBS Invest Bank, Banc of America Securities LLC, Deutsche Bank Securities, Piper Jaffray, and Thomas Weisel Partners LLC—that the IPO is “oversubscribed with no appreciable price sensitivity,” meaning investors are willing to buy in even at the high end of the $15.50-$17.50 price range. The underwriters “didn’t give a degree of oversubscription—just more than one times,” Holmes says.

GT Solar was founded in 1994 and is controlled by private equity firm GFI Energy Ventures and alternative-energy investment manager Oaktree Capital Management. If the offering goes ahead as planned, it will be the first IPO by a U.S. venture- or PE-backed company since the end of the first quarter, breaking not only the regional New England IPO drought but the national one as well.

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Aren’t things supposed to slow down in the summer? There was lots of dealmaking happening in New England last week, across life sciences and high-tech fields.

—Northborough, MA-based Aspen Aerogels, which makes nanotech-based insulation, raised $37 million from Arcapita Ventures, Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, Reservoir Capital Group, and RockPort Capital Partners.

—Waltham, MA-based ImmunoGen (NASDAQ: IMGN), which has half a dozen cancer drugs in clinical trials, raised about $25 million in a sale of stock to Ziff Asset Management.

—RFID software maker OATSystems, also of Waltham, was acquired by Checkpoint Systems (NYSE: CKP) of Thorofare, NJ, for an undisclosed sum.

—GTC Biotherapeutics of Framingham, MA, inked a deal with Deerfield, IL-based Ovation Pharmaceuticals to develop and market the anticlotting drug ATryn—which GTC produces in the milk of genetically engineered goats—in the United States.

—Foxborough, MA-based cyber security firm Industrial Defender acquired Teltone of Bothell, WA, for an undisclosed sum.

—RNAi-based drug developer RXi Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RXII) of Worcester, MA, announced a $8.7 million private placement of stock.

—Software consulting firm Security Innovation of Wilmington, MA, raised $7.1 million in a Series A financing round led by Brook Venture Partners.

—Boston’s Spark Capital teamed with Seattle’s Bezos Expeditions to invest a reported $15 million in Twitter.

—Photovoltaics maker Evergreen Solar (NASDAQ: ESLR) of Marlboro, MA announced a $300 million sale of senior convertible notes to help fund construction of its manufacturing facilities. A few days later, it expanded the offering to $325 million.

—New England Patriots owner the Kraft Group of Foxborough, MA, led a $4.6 million Series A investment in New York-based social media site BlogTalkRadio. The startup’s software gives users free tools for creating their own call-in talk shows.

—Woonsocket, RI-based prescription drug provider CVS Caremark forged an alliance with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) to give consumers online tools for tracking their health information, using Microsoft’s HealthVault.

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Evergreen Solar (NASDAQ: ESLR) of Marlboro, MA today announced it plans to sell $300 million worth of senior convertible notes to help fund the completion of its Devens, MA, plant and to begin construction of a new manufacturing facility. Much of the capacity at the Devens plant is now spoken for, thanks to a recent run of long-term contracts that Evergreen has signed.

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New England’s public life sciences firms were feeling particularly newsworthy this last week, it seems. But plenty of private firms are represented in this first item:

—Wade uncovered yet another thriving New England tech cluster: The thirty-odd “Health 2.0″ firms using the Web to deliver various kinds of healthcare services. The next day he profiled one such company, Newton, MA’s InnovationRx, that uses e-mail, text messages, and phone calls to help patients remember to take their medicine.

—At an annual meeting, shareholders rejected billionaire investor Carl Icahn’s bid to put his people on the board of Cambridge, MA-based Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB).

—Cambridge, MA-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) inked a deal worth up to $93 million, plus royalties, with Japan’s Kyowa Hakko Kogyo to commercialize an RNAi-based treatment for respiratory syncytial virus in Japan and other major Asian markets.

—ImmunoGen (NASDAQ: IMGN) of Waltham, MA, raised about $25 million in a sale of 7.8 million shares of stock to Ziff Asset Management.

—GTC Biotherapeutics of Framingham, MA, forged a partnership worth as much as $257 million with Deerfield, IL’s Ovation Pharmaceuticals. The firms will work together to try to bring GTC’s ATryn—an anti-clotting and anti-inflammatory drug produced in the milk of genetically engineered goats–to market in the United States.

—Cambridge, MA-based Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ) and Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ISIS) of Carlsbad, CA, finalized the terms of their partnership to develop Isis’s cholesterol-lowering drug, mipomersen. The new terms shift $50 million more of the development costs to Isis.

—RXi Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RXII), a Worcester, MA-based firm seeking to commercialize RNAi-based medicines, raised about $8.7 million in a private placement of stock.

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RXi Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RXII) inked a deal to sell just over a million shares of its common stock to institutional investors for a total of some $8.7 million. The Worcester, MA-based firm, whose stock debuted in March, plans to use the proceeds of this private placement to build its pipeline of RNAi-based drugs, among other things.

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[Updated below.] In a major vote of confidence for current management under CEO James Mullen, shareholders at Biogen Idec’s annual meeting this morning have evidently rejected the slate of board nominees put forth by investor Carl Icahn and approved the company’s choices instead. “We think we didn’t succeed in getting onto the board of Biogen, so we congratulate you guys,” said Icahn Partners managing director Alex Denner, one of the three nominees Icahn put forward, during a discussion period at the start of the meeting, which is still ongoing.

Biogen co-founder and board member Phil Sharp then went to the mike, defending what he said was outstanding research at the firm over the years—countering Denner’s previous charge that research has been slipping. “The nominees for the board have served us very well and obviously we would support their reelection,” said Sharp (who is himself up for reelection). Sharp pointed out that Biogen has four products in Phase 3 testing, with another on the way, eight in Phase 2. “This is a record of research accomplishment that’s outstanding,” he said. “I think the company’s in an excellent position to move forward.” Sharp received a warm round of applause after his remarks.

Icahn began building his stake in Biogen (NASDAQ: BIIB) in August, SEC filings indicate, just a few months after he earned huge payday through the $15.6 billion sale of MedImmune to AstraZeneca, a move he had pushed. Last fall, he began similarly exhorting Biogen to investigate a sale, a move to which Biogen quickly acceded. But early this year, about a month after the company’s management declared the sales attempt unsuccessful, Icahn nominated his own slate of three candidates for the Biogen board. The group, let by Icahn Partners managing director Alex Denner, has since laid out four main goals for Biogen, should the slate be elected: to boost research and development spending, improve employee morale, bolster relations with partners, and possibly cut expenses outside research.

You can read a lot more details here and here. And yesterday, we ran an exclusive interview with Denner, who added a bit more detail and his own personal reflection on Biogen’s research, drawing back on his days as an MIT undergrad.

Icahn’s plan was that by winning three of the four board seats up for election this year, he would be in position to seek all four up for grabs at next year’s meeting. That would give him a controlling seven seats on the 12-person board.

But today, without a single board representative going forward (the official tally of votes has not yet been announced), that goal seemed to have slipped largely out of his reach. Still, it is too early to declare Icahn dead in the water. He is still a major shareholder, and as such in position to advocate for change—something at which he excels, whether in the boardroom or outside it. Time will tell whether he will choose to continue the fight or focus his attentions elsewhere.

Update @ 10:15 am: The board meeting just broke up, and Biogen handed out a press statement saying “based on a preliminary count provided by its proxy solicitor, stockholders have elected all four of the Company’s nominees…” Shareholders also rejected Icahn’s proposal to fix the board at 12 seats.

Alex Denner, meanwhile, held an impromptu press conference outside the Academy building. He indicated that Biogen’s board had indicated its willingness to talk with Icahn’s representatives in the not-too-distant future, but declined to give any specifics of when the meeting might take place or what might be involved. He also said that his group had the support of at least some top 10 shareholders, and that given it is a major shareholder itself, “We really think we have a right to be on the board,” he said.

Biogen declined to make any of its executives available, but spokesperson Naomi Aoki said, “we’re very happy.”

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Carl Icahn has launched a new line of attack on Biogen Idec’s credibility. The billionaire investor, in a memo to shareholders filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission early today, says the company’s public statements about its sale process last year don’t match up with internal documents it had to hand over in court. Based on his reading of the documents, which he sued to obtain in Delaware court, Icahn concludes the board of the Cambridge, MA-based company (NASDAQ: BIIB) had “very little” input in crafting and overseeing the effort, despite public statements to the contrary.

Icahn’s memo starts with a juicy headline: “Biogen’s Sale Process: When Will We Know the Truth?” Icahn has argued since January that Biogen’s sale process was doomed to fail from the start because of how it restricted bidders from talking to Biogen’s two big partners, Irish drugmaker Elan and South San Francisco-based Genentech, until first submitting a binding offer.

Icahn starts making his case with a statement from Biogen CEO James Mullen in February, when he called the sale process “professional, objective and thorough.” Minutes from the board meeting on October 12, the day the sale process was announced, tell a different story, Icahn says. The documents show no mention that the board was advised on the design of the sale process. It wasn’t until December 12, Icahn says, that the board got its first, and only, description of the design of the sale process. That was the day Biogen pulled the plug on its sale, which triggered a $5 billion drop in market value the next day.

Icahn goes on to say that at least one potential bidder, who isn’t named, walked away after it asked for permission to speak with Elan, presumably to discuss terms of the partnership for marketing Tysabri, the fast-growing multiple sclerosis drug. At an investor conference in January, Mullen said that the company’s terms didn’t get in the way of bidders entering the sale process.

Biogen’s response was blunt. “There’s nothing in the documents that shows the process was flawed in any way, despite Mr. Icahn’s false allegations. The documents are completely consistent with what we said all along,” says spokeswoman Naomi Aoki. The board actually met and reviewed the sale process eight times between October and December, she says. When asked how Icahn could come to the conclusion that only one such board discussion took place, she said, “it’s inaccurate.”

Icahn started building his stake in Biogen shares in August, SEC filings show, just a few months after he made a bundle by pushing for the $15.6 billion sale of MedImmune to AstraZeneca. His efforts to repeat that history with Biogen haven’t worked out the same way, although if he gets his way on June 19, when shareholders will vote on his three nominees to the board, it could move him a step closer to another payday.

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Indevus Pharmaceuticals got slapped down hard this morning. The Lexington, MA-based company said today it expects the FDA to formally ask for more safety data that will require a new clinical trial before it will approve Nebido, a long-lasting testosterone replacement therapy for men with low levels of the male sex hormone. Shares of the company (NASDAQ: IDEV) sunk 66 percent to $1.40 at noon.

The FDA’s beef with Nebido is that, if injected improperly, it can cause rare, short-term coughing episodes, Indevus said today in a statement. The company’s clinical trials found one coughing episode out of 500 patients. In that case, the side effect resolved within 10 minutes and didn’t require medical attention, Indevus said. “We are very surprised and disappointed by the position the FDA is taking,” said Glenn Cooper, Indevus’ CEO, in the statement.

Indevus isn’t giving up, intending to pump more resources into another study to satisfy the FDA, Cooper said. That should take 18 months, followed by another 6-month review period by the agency before it can be cleared for sale in the U.S. (Indevus already has several other drugs for endocrinology and neurology applications on the market.)

Since Nebido is already approved in Europe and the side effect is described in the product label, the decision “flies in the face of logic,” because the FDA has power to require new surveillance of drug safety once a drug is on the market, said David Miller, president of Biotech Stock Research, an independent research firm in Seattle, in a note to clients this morning. It may be that “this division of FDA has decided they are uncomfortable approving new drugs,” that treat low testosterone levels, Miller wrote.

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