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| Valeant CEO J. Michael Pearson |
Valeant ($VRX) CEO J. Michael Pearson is plenty familiar with the pharma M&A space; after all, he's made scores of deals since taking up the post in 2008. And the way he sees it, with pickups happening left and right in the sector, some of pharma's recent acquisitions "are not going to work."
There's a "bit of a bubble" going on in the industry, Pearson said Thursday, as quoted by Bloomberg. "In terms of prices being paid for acquisitions, some of them make sense and some of them don't make sense."
It's a sentiment others have recently echoed, too, including GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK) chief Andrew Witty. Last week, the British pharma giant's helmsman told the Financial Times that ultralow interest rates--a.k.a. cheap money--was spurring companies to make "poor choices"' when it came to dealmaking.
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| GlaxoSmithKline CEO Andrew Witty |
"We're not going to get drawn into the idea that just because money is cheap we can do anything," he told the paper.
But unlike Glaxo--which has stayed out of the M&A spotlight since inking a multi-billion-dollar asset swap with rival Novartis ($NVS) last spring--Valeant's still pushing full steam ahead when it comes to making buys. This year alone, it's snagged GI specialist Salix and the assets of bankrupt biotech Dendreon, and earlier this week reports said Egypt's Amoun--one of the country's largest drugmakers--could be next.
Pearson also told Bloomberg that he and the company "like Asia," noting its rising incomes and unmet medical need. "We have been and we will continue to make acquisitions," he said.
And Valeant's not the only one with wheeling and dealing to do. Other drugmakers--including Teva ($TEVA), which is currently trying to buy Mylan ($MYL), and Mylan, which is currently trying to by Perrigo ($PRGO)--are on the prowl, too, and all the activity in the sector hasn't scared them away.
Even GSK could soon find itself at the center of another deal, whether or not it's interested in buying up assets itself. Earlier this week, analysts speculated the company could make a good match for deal-hungry Pfizer ($PFE), which has been hunting for a megadeal since its failed bid to buy AstraZeneca ($AZN) last year.
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Special Reports: Pharma's top 10 M&A deals of 2014 | The most influential people in biopharma today - 2014 - J. Michael Pearson - Valeant