Imclone Systems Company

ImClone Systems Inc. said it had hired investment bank Lazard Ltd. to explore the potential sale or merger of the company as competition for its colon cancer drug Erbitux heats up. Investors are skeptical that the New York-based company will easily find a buyer. Some analysts said the most obvious purchaser would be Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., which owns about 20% of ImClone and is in charge of the clinical development of Erbitux.

Home decorating celebrity Martha Stewart took her case to the court of public opinion Thursday, professing her innocence in a newspaper advertisement and a new Web site, a day after an indictment accused her of committing securities fraud and lying to authorities. At the same time, ImClone Systems Inc. said Thursday that it would resubmit its U.S. marketing application for its cancer drug Erbitux. That news sent ImClone's shares soaring 27% in electronic trading after the market closed.

The House panel probing Martha Stewart's sale of ImClone Systems Inc. stock has issued a subpoena for her broker's home and cell phone records from last December. The broker, Peter Bacanovic, was placed on leave last month by Merrill Lynch & Co. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is investigating whether Stewart had inside information when she sold her ImClone shares a day before federal regulators said they would not review the company's cancer drug Erbitux.

Merrill Lynch & Co. has suspended the broker who handled a trade for Martha Stewart of shares of ImClone Systems Inc., a biotech company whose former chief executive has been arrested on securities fraud charges. In a statement released Friday, Merrill Lynch said it had put Peter Bacanovic and his assistant, Douglas Faneuil, on paid leave following an internal investigation.

ImClone Systems Inc. said Wednesday that federal regulators are considering taking action against the troubled drug maker for failing to accurately disclose information in December about an experimental cancer drug. ImClone said it received a notice saying staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission may recommend the SEC penalize the company for disclosures it made, or did not make, to the public immediately after learning that regulators had declined to accept its drug, Erbitux, for review.

ImClone Systems Inc., the biotech company at the center of an insider-trading scandal involving Martha Stewart, said Monday that its liability for unpaid taxes at the end of 2002 was about $38.8 million, which is less than expected. The company had said liabilities, including those related to former Chief Executive Samuel D. Waksal's failure to pay some state and federal taxes, might be as much as $60 million.

ImClone Systems Inc. founder and former Chief Executive Samuel D. Waksal pleaded not guilty Monday to insider trading, bank fraud, perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges in connection with an alleged scheme to dump shares of the company days before regulators rejected its highly touted new cancer drug. Monday's indictment included last week's allegations by a federal grand jury of destroying documents, lying to investigators and putting up the same collateral for two different bank loans.

Martha Stewart's broker, who has emerged as a key link in the ImClone Systems trading scandal, avoided charges of contempt of Congress, and handed over his home phone and cell phone records for December to congressional investigators late Monday. "We met the deadline," said Melissa Berenson, a spokeswoman for Richard Strassberg, the attorney representing Peter Bacanovic.

Confident that the government has failed to prove fraud and obstruction charges beyond a reasonable doubt, Martha Stewart's defense rested Wednesday after calling a single witness. With the defense for Peter E. Bacanovic also resting Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum scheduled closing arguments for Monday and Tuesday.

If a perfectionist like Martha Stewart were going to cook up a conspiracy, her chief defense lawyer argued Tuesday, the result would never be as sloppy and inconsistent as the one the government alleges. Robert G. Morvillo, in a three-hour closing statement in U.S. District Court, pointed to the "major, gaping, huge holes" in the alleged cover story of Stewart and her former stockbroker, Peter E. Bacanovic, to insist that the government's theory makes no sense.