Have to say I agree with tada on this.  But I guess never say never.  In addition to the potential upside impairment tada mentioned, to me there would be considerable additional investment required to become a standalone pharma.  I'm sure Eastern has plenty of opportunities to apply profits to and why decrease potential ROI?  Increased time and capital generally takes ROI one way, down, and if RVX is worth having it is probably going to become very expensive very quickly.  To me RVX either gets bought out or becomes a successful biotech/royalty stream generator.  If it is the latter one could only imagine how much an outfit like KKR would pay down the road for a huge, solid revenue stream. 

As far as AstraZeneca goes, I've said it before and I'll say it again, if Apabetalone is successful and AZN doesn't own it I can't believe Pascal Soriot keeps his job. One thing to consider though is that IMO the revenue potential for successful Apabetalone is so huge that even if it takes multiple $billions to purchase it it will still be a good deal for a BP and could be hugely impactful on almost every BP's revenue line (perhaps maybe not J&J, still most).

Personally I hope RVX gets taken out sooner than later, making all of us an awesome return and then all RVX's IP potential can be explored asap in order that needy patients can more quickly benefit from the successes.