Icahn Drops Bid for Mylan

Carl Icahn dropped his $5.39-billion takeover bid for Mylan Laboratories Inc. and offered to sell his shares after U.S. regulators opened a probe of a Mylan pain patch that was linked to 120 deaths.

“It would be difficult to win a proxy fight with the stock trading at the current levels,” Icahn’s High River investment group said Monday. “As previously stated, Mr. Icahn did not wish to be a passive investor in this company.”

The billionaire investor will make a profit of at least 14% on his 26.3 million shares. He may gain $62.7 million under Mylan’s share-repurchase program, based on the firm’s statement Sunday that it probably would buy 24.7 million at $19.50 each. Icahn also would have collected $1.6 million in dividends paid Friday after Mylan doubled the quarterly rate and $1.6 million for the two previous quarters.

The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that painkiller patches sold by Mylan and Johnson & Johnson might be linked to 120 reports of patients who died using the products. Mylan won approval in January to market a generic version of J&J;’s Duragesic pain relief patch. The products contain fentanyl, a morphine-like drug.

Shares of Canonsburg, Pa.-based Mylan fell $1.02 to $18.38.