Free Republic

Pfizer is spending more than $2 billion in cash to buy a drugmaker focused on cancer treatments. Pfizer will pay $18.50 for each share of Trillium Therapeutics Inc., or more than double the stock’s 60-day weighted average price. Trillium has no products on the market. Its potential treatments include biologics that aim to prime a patient’s immune system to detect and destroy cancer cells. Its two lead candidates are in early-stage testing and focus on hematology. That includes blood, bone marrow and lymph node cancers like leukemia or lymphoma. The deal announced Monday will need approval from Trillium shareholders.

Facebook investors have called on the company’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to step down as chairman, following reports that the company hired a public relations firm to smear its critics by drawing links to George Soros. The attack on Mr Zuckerberg is set to complicate the daunting challenge facing Sir Nick Clegg, Facebook's new global head of policy and communications, who joined last month and has been asked to conduct a review of Facebook's use of lobbying firms. Jonas Kron, a senior vice president at Trillium Asset Management, a US investor which owns an £8.5m stake in Facebook, last night...