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Bristol-Myers Squibb was sued for $6.4 billion on Thursday for allegedly delaying its Breyanzi cancer drug to avoid payments to shareholders of the former Celgene, which the drugmaker bought in 2019.

According to a complaint in Manhattan federal court, Bristol-Myers failed to use contractually required “diligent efforts” to win US Food and Drug Administration approval for the non-Hodgkin lymphoma drug by a Dec. 31, 2020, deadline.

By missing the deadline, Bristol-Myers was excused from owing an additional $9 in cash to Celgene shareholders for each share they held, enabling it to acquire Celgene at an “enormous discount” and enjoy a “windfall,” the complaint said.

Bristol-Myers bought Celgene for $80.3 billion in cash and stock in November 2019. It won FDA approval for Breyanzi, whose chemical name is lisocabtagene maraleucel, on Feb. 5.

The lawsuit was brought by UMB Bank NA, acting as a trustee for Celgene’s former shareholders.

Former shareholders of Celgene charge in a lawsuit that Bristol-Myers denied them rightful payments by deliberately delaying one of its cancer drugs.SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

“We will not be commenting on pending litigation,” Bristol-Myers said in a statement.

The $9 per share “milestone” payment had been contingent on New York-based Bristol-Myers winning FDA approval by specified deadlines for three drugs that Celgene had been developing.

UMB said Bristol-Myers withheld or belatedly submitted critical information to the FDA for Breyanzi’s approval, and did not prepare its manufacturing plants for required inspections.

“Other cellular therapies based on similar technology have received FDA approval without the issues and ineptitude that plagued Bristol-Myers, and in substantially less time,” UMB said.

A lawyer for the Kansas City, Missouri-based bank declined additional comment.

Bristol-Myers won FDA approval for the two other Celgene drugs, Zeposia for multiple sclerosis and Abecma to treat multiple myeloma, by the specified deadlines.

Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling’s stealth energy investment venture has launched, two people familiar with the matter said this week, staffed with former McKinsey & Co. consultants like himself and offering a technology edge to oil and gas returns.

Skilling was convicted of securities fraud and insider trading in connection with manipulating financial reports ahead of the 2001 collapse of Enron. He served more than 12 years in prison and was released in 2019.

His venture, Veld LLC, was set up as a digital marketplace to sell packages of oil and gas production to investors, sources have said. The business has analytical software that investors can use to evaluate packages for their potential returns, the people said.

The company in April filed for a US trademark for its software and business operation under the name Veld Applied Analytics and last year submitted a trademark application for a business named Shalemetrics. The former facilitates “asset backed securitizations for oil and gas producers,” according to a post by Ron Hulme, who joined the firm this year as chairman.

Hulme, who spent more than 26 years at McKinsey and became its global practice leader for oil and gas, is a senior executive at Houston-based energy investors Parallel Resource Partners and Bluescape Energy Partners in addition to his role at Veld Applied Analytics.

Former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling (center) leaves the federal courthouse in Houston with his attorney following behind at the end of his fraud and conspiracy trial, May 25, 2006. Skilling was found guilty of 19 charges following 16 weeks of testimony and six days of jury deliberation.Getty Images

Taek Chung is a managing director for Veld Applied Analytics, according to patent office filings. He has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University and also worked at McKinsey, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Chung’s LinkedIn profile describes his current status as being at a Houston, Texas-based “Stealth Startup.”

Skilling, Hulme and Chung did not respond to requests for comments.

In fundraising meetings last year, Skilling told potential investors he had secured significant financial commitments for the project, a source familiar with the matter said, estimating he had raised tens of millions of dollars at the time.

The former Enron Field, where Major League Baseball’s Houston Astros play. The team bought the rights to have the field renamed after Enron fell into disgrace and bankruptcy. The field is now known as Minute Maid Park.Getty Images

Skilling was a long-time McKinsey consultant who helped Enron build its natural gas marketing and finance operation, and later became its chief executive. He turned an energy pipeline company into one of the 10 largest US companies before questionable accounting and related-party trading practices led to its bankruptcy.

Enron’s tainted history and Skilling’s role in its financial demise should not have a significant impact on Veld’s ability to attract business, said Ed Hirs, an Energy Fellow and lecturer at the University of Houston. The bankruptcy caught many investors by surprise. The company claimed to have $100 billion in revenue the year before it collapsed.

“I don’t see it as a positive or negative,” Hirs said, referring to Skilling’s reputation. “To succeed, they have to compete with the established firms in the business.”

Veld’s website is up and running and soliciting email addresses for those interested in receiving newsletters. The site describes Veld as an “energy software” company.

Hometown International — the New Jersey company valued at more than $100 million on the stock market despite running just a single deli — is in fact a shell company that’s part of a complex, international reverse-merger plan, according to a report.

Peter Coker Jr., the Asia-based chairman and recently appointed CEO of Hometown, approached a Hong Kong hedge fund called Maso Capital Partners in early 2020 about using Hometown as a shell company for a reverse merger, according to the New York Times Magazine.

Reverse mergers allow a private company to go public by merging with a firm that’s already listed on a public market and essentially take the place of the pre-existing “shell.”

The process has been criticized for, among other matters, allowing companies to bypass the intense scrutiny and disclosure requirements of a traditional initial public offering.

In this case, the idea reportedly was to use Hometown’s listing on the over-the-counter US markets to give a foreign company access to American capital by merging with Hometown.

Manoj Jain, an alumnus of Credit Suisse and co-chief investment officer of the Hong Kong-based hedge fund Maso, confirmed to the Times that the firm still plans to execute a merger with Hometown.

“We took the opportunity to invest in Hometown at a reasonable valuation, with the ability to assist in its acquisition strategy using our extensive network of private companies,” Jain is quoted as saying.

It’s unclear exactly when Maso made its initial investment in Hometown, which the Times pegged at $2.5 million, but the stock price of the company was much lower at the beginning of 2020 and only began to rise in the spring and through the summer.

Paul Morina, the principal and head wrestling coach of Paulsboro High School in New Jersey was listed in financial records as the president of Hometown International, which owns a single delicatessen.Jersey Sports Zone Youtube

Jain added that he plans to find a target company that wants to merge with Hometown for under $500 million, according to the Times. The target would then take Hometown over, acquiring a greater than 51 percent share.

“The name changes, the ticker changes, the board changes, the management changes, everything changes as the target company enters the U.S. capital market,” Jain explained.

But all that doesn’t answer the question of Hometown’s bizarre valuation of nearly $100 million despite it losing cash and doing just over $35,000 in sales over the past two years combined.

When asked to comment on the suspicious trading activity that pushed the firm’s valuation to eyebrow-raising heights last year, Jain told the Times, “Maso Capital has no knowledge on the buying or selling in HWIN.”

HWIN is the stock ticker that Hometown International uses.

Jain noted that Maso has not traded any of its shares in the company since its initial investment.

A former Securities and Exchange Commission staffer speculated to the Times that the run-up in Hometown’s valuation could be part of a long-term plan to “uplist,” or move the stock from the over-the-counter markets, in which buyers and sellers deal directly with one another, to an exchange like the NYSE or Nasdaq, which are centralized.

Market capitalization is one criteria exchanges consider when deciding to list companies. Listing on an exchange would make it easier for shareholders to trade stock in the company.

The Times noted, though, that Hometown faced various other barriers to finding its way to a major exchange, if that was the goal.

Representatives for Maso and Hometown did not return The Post’s request for comment.

The latest development comes weeks after Hometown International first drew scrutiny when hedge fund manager David Einhorn pointed out the company’s bizarre market capitalization.

Einhorn used the publicly traded company, which is listed on the over-the-counter market, as a warning sign for investors in a letter to clients.

Einhorn noted that the company had reached that eye-popping valuation despite reporting total sales of less than $37,000 over the past two years and was closed for nearly half of 2020 due to pandemic restrictions.

“The pastrami must be amazing,” Einhorn wrote in April.

Later that month, the management of Hometown International disavowed the company’s valuation, according to SEC filings.

“Management is aware of no basis to support the company’s stock price, based upon its revenue or assets,” the company said in an April 30 statement.

Kraken, a cryptocurrency exchange with a reported $20 billion valuation, is launching a new trading app — but don’t expect digital confetti showers when you use it to buy Bitcoin.

The San Francisco-based crypto platform already has a “Kraken Pro” app targeted at professional investors, but its newest product is a bet it can bring in retail traders by facilitating simple transactions like buying $100 of bitcoin, and then eventually graduate to more complicated transactions like shorting Dogecoin on margin.

Indeed, Kraken’s strategy is to keep customers for their entire life cycle by offering a whole suite of products, said Jeremy Welch, Kraken’s chief product officer.

“We realized that consumers need our expert security, great design and core mission just as much or more than professionals,” Welch told The Post.

In some ways, the new Kraken app that launched Wednesday is a foil to Robinhood. Kraken makes money on transaction fees; Robinhood advertises commission free trading but makes ends meet with the controversial “payment for order flow” practice that sells information about user’s trades to brokers.

Until recently, Robinhood also had used controversial “gamification” features like digital confetti, which have stirred concerns from regulators. In addition to a simpler interface that doesn’t offer the same rush of dopamine, the Kraken app vets all 50 cryptocurrencies it allows users to trade on the platform.

Kraken allows users to trader more than 50 kinds of cryptocurrencies.Getty Images

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev was forced to defend the company’s actions in front of top political figures earlier this year. And newly tapped SEC chief, Gary Gensler, vowed to look at Robinhood’s business model, cautioning investors in a hearing earlier this month that there’s no such thing as a free app.

“There are costs. It’s like an iceberg: Most of the iceberg is below the surface,” Gensler said.  “The costs are below the surface.”

Kraken, which has largely avoided pitfalls and run-ins with regulators, is angling to take itself public in 2022.