Controversial pharma CEO Martin Shkreli bails on Valeant bet

The one-time hedge fund executive now running a biotech firm at the center of a drug-pricing controversy on Monday said he has bailed from a losing bet he made on another contentious drug maker: Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc . On the day last week that Valeant shares plunged in response to a shortseller’s accusation of accounting irregularities, Martin Shkreli, head of Turing Pharmaceuticals, took to Twitter to say he had bought shares of Valeant while at the same time selling short the shares of rival Allergan Plc , a transaction known as a pairs trade. Onward and upward,” Shkreli tweeted, just hours after Valeant laid out a detailed defense against the accusations of accounting fraud.

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South Africa’s Naspers to sell Czech online business for $201 mln

South African media firm Naspers will sell its holdings in two Czech online businesses for $201 million after failing to merge it with a Romanian internet retailer, the company said on Monday. Naspers, which started as an Afrikaans language newspaper publisher a century ago, said the disposal of online retailer Netretail and price comparison platform Heureka was part of a plan to optimise its group structure. After different strategies prevented Naspers from merging Netretail with Romania’s eMag, both of which it bought in 2012, the company said it decided to focus on eMag as its preferred e-tail platform in the region.

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