What's the real fair price for Genzyme?

We're wondering whether Genzyme's new asking price of $89 per share is the real deal.

We're wondering whether Genzyme's new asking price of $89 per share is the real deal--or whether it's high-balling its price tag in hopes that Sanofi-Aventis would meet it in the middle of that number and its current offer of $69. Whatever company executives privately believe, the public announcement that it's worth $89, or something like $23 billion, astonished plenty of people, even those who agreed that $69 was far too low.

Sanofi itself called $89 a "totally unrealistic" figure. And it's true that Genzyme's own predictions for future sales of its potential multiple sclerosis drug Campath--$3 billion at peak--outstrip even the most optimistic analyst forecast by about $1 billion. Its forecast for 2011 earnings of $4.30 to $4.60 per share beat analyst predictions by 20 percent--and these are the numbers on which Genzyme built its $89 value estimate.

But Sanofi's Campath forecast is equally off analyst estimates, albeit in the other direction: The French drugmaker b