What's Big Pharma's best hope for weathering the next few years of expiring patents and patchy pipelines? M&A, says London's Financial Times. That's not exactly revolutionary, of course; there were almost 1,000 deals in pharma/healthcare for the first half of 2007, according to Pricewaterhouse Coopers. But the Financial Times fingers a few potential acquisition targets, including U.S.-based Sepracor and the UK's Shire Pharmaceuticals [1].
But not so fast: The newspaper also notes that Merck [2] has steadily improved its lot by avoiding acquisitions. Pfizer [3], on the other hand, bought Warner-Lambert and Pharmacia, becoming the world's largest drug maker by sales. Whose stock has performed best? Merck's. Maybe bigger isn't better.
- read the M&A report [4] from the Financial Times
- check out the Merck v. Pfizer article [5]
Related Articles:
M&A activity heats up as biotech IPOs struggle [6]
The Top 5 Buyouts of 2007 [7]
Top 5 deals of the first half of 2007 [8]
Links:
[1] http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/shire-massachusetts-pass-incentive-bill-now/2007-08-31
[2] http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/merck-scores-high-race-cholesterol-drug/2007-09-04
[3] http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/troubled-pfizer-blueprints-biotech-venture-effort/2007-08-02
[4] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1/7c7cb5ac-6ff7-11dc-a6d1-0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=e8477cc4-c820-11db-b0dc-000b5df10621.html
[5] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1745c0a0-6fd1-11dc-b66c-0000779fd2ac.html
[6] http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/ma-activity-heats-up-as-biotech-ipos-struggle/2007-02-23
[7] http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/top-5-buyouts-2007/2007-07-23
[8] http://www.fiercebiotech.com/special-reports/top-5-deals-first-half-2007