Photo

The Irish drug maker Shire has agreed to acquire NPS Pharmaceuticals for $5.2 billion, a deal that will allow it to move on from its botched sale to AbbVie last year.

Shire, based in Dublin, said on Sunday that it would pay $46 a share for NPS, which is based in New Jersey and specializes in drugs for gastrointestinal disorders. That is a 51 percent increase over NPS’s share price on Dec. 16, before rumors of the deal first surfaced.

The announcement is the first big corporate acquisition of the year and, like many recent major deals, it is in the health care sector. Also important is that it is a cross-border takeover, a signal of the continued global consolidation among drug makers. And Shire will pay for NPS using all cash, thanks to interest rates that remain low and make it easy for corporations to borrow money cheaply.

This deal would allow Shire to move past one of last year’s biggest corporate missteps. In July, Shire agreed to sell itself to AbbVie, the big American drug maker, for $54 billion. The deal was the largest of the year at the time and came after months of tense negotiations.

But AbbVie, like many other American companies last year, wanted to undertake an inversion transaction, in which a company reincorporates in a country with lower taxes. Acquiring Shire would have allowed AbbVie to reincorporate in the small British tax haven of Jersey. When the deal was announced, AbbVie played down its interest in an inversion and emphasized the strategic merits of combining the companies.

For Susan Kilsby, the recently appointed chairwoman of Shire’s board, the sale of the company for a generous premium was a quick success, and for Flemming Ornskov, Shire’s chief executive, it was a vindication of his work in building up the company’s portfolio of drugs.

Months later, however, when the Treasury Department announced new rules targeting companies trying to strike inversions, AbbVie retrenched. Rather than go through with the acquisition of Shire without the tax benefits, it decided to walk away. As a result, it paid Shire $1.6 billion in cash.

Though Shire emerged from the ordeal somewhat richer, it was unclear what its next move would be. Some analysts speculated it remained a takeover target for another big global drug maker.

“It was pretty clear they were going to do something. They had a ton of money on their hands,” said Ronny Gal, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “That doesn’t take anything away from the fact that this is a very solid deal. It does say a lot about the strategy of Shire.”

Mr. Ornskov said the acquisition announced Sunday, the largest in Shire’s history, was a turning point after the failed AbbVie deal.

“This is a statement of our intent to be a strong, thriving independent company,” Mr. Ornskov said in an interview. “It speaks to the company’s ability to generate cash and to execute on strategically relevant deals.” For NPS, the sale comes as the company was enjoying its richest stock market valuation in more than a decade, making it an opportune time to sell.

NPS has just one product on the market and reported $57 million in revenue during its most recent quarter. Its second product is under review in the United States and Europe. Both drugs are intended not to cure patients, but to improve the quality of their lives. Annual fees for the drugs can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a patient, making them potential profit centers for Shire if it can expand their distribution.

“I am confident that this transaction will accelerate our ambition of creating a world where every person living with a rare disease has a therapy,” said François Nader, chief executive of NPS. He added that he believed joining the companies would add value for shareholders and continue to help patients with problems like short bowel syndrome and hypoparathyroidism.

Though Shire is paying a high premium for a company with new products and relatively little revenue, Mr. Ornskov said it was a good value.

“They have significant value. We have to pay for that,” he said. “But we also get significant value-creation opportunities with this deal.”

The deal for NPS, however, makes it even less likely that Shire will be an acquisition target any time soon.

“Nobody is going to pay the premium necessary, especially after this deal,” said Mr. Gal. “This is the first of a series of acquisitions for Shire. They will be on the buyer side for a few years.”

Citigroup and Lazard advised Shire, and Davis Polk & Wardwell and Slaughter and May provided legal advice. Goldman Sachs and Leerink Partners advised NPS, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom provided legal advice. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter.