Pfizer raises AstraZeneca offer

London - US drugmaker Pfizer has raised its offer for AstraZeneca to £63bn, it said on Friday, adding that the British drugmaker was reviewing the proposal.

The £50 a share indicative offer comes after AstraZeneca had rebuffed a proposal valuing it at  £46.61 per share.

Pfizer's pursuit of AstraZeneca to create the world's biggest pharmaceuticals company comes amid a wave of deal-making in the healthcare sector.

Buying AstraZeneca would boost Pfizer's pipeline of cancer drugs and create significant cost and tax savings.

But the takeover, which would be the largest acquisition of British company by a foreign business, has stirred political controversy in Britain.

In an attempt to smooth relations with the government, Pfizer chief executive Ian Read wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron, promising to complete a substantial new research centre planned by AstraZeneca in Cambridge and retain a manufacturing plant in Macclesfield.

Read also said that 20% of the enlarged group's workforce would be in Britain.

Pfizer said AstraZeneca had indicated it would respond after its board had reviewed the proposal, which would see shareholders receiving, for each AstraZeneca share, 1.845 shares in the combined company and £15.98 in cash.

UK government pressing Pfizer

The British government said it had pressed Pfizer to commit to British jobs and research in its bid for AstraZeneca, but the decision on whether the British group will be sold was a matter for its shareholders.

"This is ultimately going to be a decision for AstraZeneca shareholders," the Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts told BBC Radio on Friday.

"We are pressing Pfizer in a very hard-nosed way. Their letter has a set of proposals for research and development and manufacturing in the UK that have moved a long way from where they were a week ago."