Alere shareholders approve amended $5.3B Abbott merger

Alere (NYSE:ALR) said today its shareholders voted to approve its amended merger with Abbott (NYSE:ABT).

The amended merger was agreed to in April at a $5.3 billion price tag, with Alere shareholders receiving $51 per common share in cash. Those numbers are down from the original merger agreement, which would have seen Abbott paying $5.8 billion for the company.

Alere said that the transaction is still subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, according to an SEC filing.

A series of accounting snafus, including a significantly delayed Q4 2016 earnings filing and a ban imposed on its Arriva Medical diabetes division by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services led to problems with its pending acquisition by Abbott.

Waltham, Mass.-based Alere said in March that it would miss the deadline for releasing last year’s results due to an investigation of inappropriate conduct at its South Korean Standard Diagnostics subsidiary. It wasn’t the 1st delay for Alere, which belatedly filed its 2015 annual report in August 2016 after finding “immaterial error” in its revenue recognition processes and “material weaknesses” in the way it recognized revenues and accounted for income taxes.

In its 2016 earnings report, Alere reported 4th quarter earnings which soared nearly 500%. The company posted 4th-quarter losses of -$114.1 million, or -$1.38 per share, on sales of $592.6 million for the 3 months ended Dec. 31. In May, Alere forecast Q4 losses of  -$122.3 million, or -$1.41 per share, on sales of $596.8 million.

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