Jefferies ups Novartis to buy

Novartis AG was raised to buy from hold by Jefferies International Ltd. analyst Nick Turner, who raised his price target to $77 from $74 and 2006 earnings-per-share estimate to $3.26 from $3.22 after the company announced its acquisition offer for Chiron. Turner said the move opens up the increasingly attractive vaccine market for Novartis, adds early stage oncology drugs to the company's development pipeline and could release $200 million in annual cost synergies. Shares of the Basel, Switzerland-based pharmaceutical company were down $0.11, or 0.20%, at $54.19 on volume of 1,366,200 shares versus the three-month running average of 1,276,840 shares.

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