The Giant Health Insurers Are Circling

It began in May, with Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) publicly declaring it was exploring a sale. That announcement ignited the smoldering rumors that have been swirling around the healthcare industry since the beginning of 2015: Expect a lot of consolidation in the Managed Care sector this year. By mid June The Wall Street Journal reported that UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) approached Aetna Inc. (NYSE: AET) with an offer, and that Anthem (NYSE: ANTM) and Cigna (NYSE: CI) were engaged in merger talks. We checked our DealSearchOnline database to see how each of the top five spent on managed care targets since 1994. Check ’em out.    Read More »

Biotech Blow-Out in 2015

Mergers and acquisitions in the biotechnology sector are soaring, and we’ve got the data to prove it. We checked our M&A database, DealSearchOnline, to find the average price per biotechnology deal for each of the past five years. In that span, 2013 posted the highest average, nearly $629 million. We ran the same test for 2015, through April 10, and voila – of the 63 deals we’ve captured so far, 40 of them had prices. This year’s average price per biotech transaction is already $879 million—the highest since we began following this sector in 2000. Read More »