NOVARTIS WANTS CHIRON

Chiron Corp.'s largest shareholder, Novartis AG, is offering $4.5 billion to acquire full control of the troubled Emeryville biotechnology firm, which triggered a public health crisis last year when its entire U.S. flu shot inventory was lost to bacterial contamination. Novartis, a major international drug firm based in Basel, Switzerland, that now owns a 42.2 percent stake in Chiron, said Thursday that it will pay $40 per share for the 112 million shares held by other investors. A majority of those shareholders must agree before the merger can go through.

San Francisco Chronicle (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/09/02/BUGULEGTV61.DTL&type=business)