HEALTH CARE

JOHNSON & JOHNSON MAY ABANDON GUIDANT ACQUISITION

Johnson & Johnson may abandon a $25.4 billion acquisition of Guidant because Guidant refused to accept revised terms after it recalled faulty heart defibrillators in June.

Guidant wouldn’t agree to a restructuring of the proposed transaction, New Brunswick, N.J.-based Johnson & Johnson said yesterday in a statement. Guidant, based in Indianapolis, recalled 109,000 defibrillators, setting off regulatory probes and giving competitors an advantage.

– Bloomberg News

PHARMACEUTICALS

JURY IN VIOXX CASE COMPLETES FIRST DAY OF DELIBERATIONS

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. – A jury deliberated for 6 1/2 hours yesterday without reaching a verdict in a product liability trial accusing Merck and its now-withdrawn painkiller Vioxx of being to blame for a man’s heart attack.

The six-woman, three-man panel – which includes an assistant county prosecutor, a retired surgeon’s wife, and a teacher – will try again today to decide whether the drug played a part in the heart attack suffered by Frederick “Mike” Humeston, a postal worker from Boise, Idaho.

His civil suit accuses Merck of failing to warn physicians and consumers about risks posed by Vioxx, which the company stopped selling last year because of links to heart attacks and strokes with long-term use.

Superior Court Judge Carol Higbee, who presided over the case, told jurors before they began deliberations Tuesday to take their time weighing the evidence. They spent an hour deliberating Tuesday before returning yesterday and working through lunch.

– Associated Press

FINANCIAL SERVICES

LEHMAN FINED $500,000

Lehman Brothers Holdings was fined $500,000 for failing to supervise a trading strategy aimed at selling blocks of shares for money managers seeking to dump stock, often in an effort to better track stock indexes.

Lehman, the fourth-biggest American securities firm, didn’t have policies in place to supervise the timing of trades relating to so-called “facilitation” contracts, particularly when there was an economic incentive for the firm to influence the closing price, the NYSE said yesterday in a statement. The New York-based firm, which didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing, was ordered to complete an internal review of its procedures to ensure that it follows good business practices in the future.

– Bloomberg News