Roche's round trip

Roche announced on Friday that it plans to sell an additional 20 million shares of Genentech (DNA) in a secondary offering, which would reduce its holdings to the 65 stake it had before it decided in June to acquire the remaining shares of the biotech company for $82.50 a share.

Investors dumped DNA shares on the news, with the stock losing $15.063 to $157.75 on 1.1 million shares traded. But even at this price, Roche would suck another $3.16 billion out of its $7 billion investment in DNA (excluding any proceeds from the 2 million-share greenshoe). That's on top of the $1.94 billion Roche raised through DNA's "second coming" in July, when 20 million shares were sold at $97 (see BioCentury Extra, July 21). ...