Paladin,

Let me say up front that I often don't understand the price paid by big pharma cos. 

Take for example the $9.7 billion buyout of MDCO by Novartis.  Very difficult to justify that price, when you already have 2 PCSK inhibitor drugs in the market with a grand total of $1 billion sales between the two of them so far.   

Or the takeout of THOR by Sanofi for $2.5 billion.  $12 share price ($300 million market cap) on Oct 31 2019 and bought out for $68 just a few WEEKS later.

I bring these 2 examples up because what they illustrate is that Big Pharma will pay stupid prices when they fell in love...and we all know that we will do anything for someone we fall in love with.   

Or the buyer could be desperate.  Sanofi was in a hyper need to buy out THOR (Sanofi CEO saw cancer as his future as Sanofi failed miserably at diabetes & CVD and closed down their research); while Vas Narasimhan at Novartis is a man in a hurry to buy out every acceptable (to his board) company.

For RVX, I think a bare bones bid has to start at US$2 billion (given the BT stamp of approval given by the Fed).  Above US$2.5 billion, you definitely need someone to fall in love with RVX.  Remember that any executive at a buying company has to push it past their board.  Few boards will approve a bid multilples higher than market cap. 

Don't take today's market cap as relevant.  Any investment bank advising RVX will leak the news that RVX is for sale, to get the share price up.  Take a look at the share price of MDCO as an example.  Went from $32 in August before someone leaked the coming bid, and that took the share price to $50...Novartis paid $85 in November.  

Note that the real selling decision makers are Hepalink and Dart.  Another point: unlike Novartis and Sanofi, I don't see Eli Lilly or Pfizer as falling in love with RVX.  So any bid higher than US$2.5 billion would need a bidding war.  Finally, if RVX is indeed bought out, the buyer will almost certainly buy out Zenith Capital at about 10 to 15% of the price they will pay for RVX.  Which may reduce the price RVX shareholders end up with.

Iconoclast