ICN Won’t Give Investor Internal Documents

ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Thursday that it won’t give a dissident shareholder internal documents related to the Costa Mesa drug maker’s planned reorganization.

Special Situations Partners Inc., an investment firm, asked ICN on

Tuesday to turn over memorandums, presentations and other documents related to the company’s restructuring. Special Situations said it needs the information to investigate possible mismanagement and wrongdoing by the company.

ICN rejected the request, saying Special Situations is seeking “highly sensitive, confidential and proprietary corporate information that we believe would go far beyond any bona fide discovery request,” ICN’s general counsel told the investment firm in a letter Thursday.

Special Situations may want to use the information for “improper purposes, including the exploitation of proprietary information to advance its own mysterious trading strategy,” ICN said in the letter.

The shareholder has proposed its own reorganization plan and met recently with other ICN investors to detail its proposal. The institutional investor couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Special Situations, which owns about 8.5% of ICN, including options, has been pressuring the company to abandon a plan announced in June to sell a minority stake in its Ribapharm hepatitis-drug unit to the public and spin off part of another unit.