Icahn group says goal to fix, not sell, Biogen

By Bill Berkrot and Lewis Krauskopf

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who has launched his second proxy battle for board representation at Biogen Idec Inc (BIIB.O), is not aiming to sell the company, only to fix it, according to an associate.

"The objective is not to try to sell the company," said Alexander Denner, managing director of the Icahn investment vehicle Icahn Partners and one of four candidates on Icahn's proposed slate of Biogen directors.

"I'm not at all opposed to Biogen being sold at the right price," Denner said. "Assuming we win the proxy fight our agenda there is going to really be to try to fix up that company."

Biogen took exception to Denner's characterization of the company.

"As we saw in our decisive victory over Mr. Icahn last year, his colorful rhetoric is not a substitute for a strategic plan. We have a plan," Biogen spokeswoman Jennifer Neiman said.

Denner, 39, who was speaking Wednesday on a panel about activist investors at the Windhover Pharmaceutical Strategic Outlook conference in New York, had been chairman of the executive committee at ImClone Systems after Icahn gained control of that biotechnology company prior to its sale to Eli Lilly and Co (LLY.N).

"Biogen does not have the kind of basic operational failure that ImClone had," said Denner, who said ImClone was "a basket case of a company" with terrible morale and a raft of legal problems when Icahn gained control.

Last year, Icahn lost a proxy fight against Biogen. He had accused the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech of sabotaging its own announced attempt to find a buyer for the company.