Takeda Adds Maverick Therapeutics

Takeda Adds Maverick Therapeutics

The pharmaceutical giant Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. (NYSE: TAK) is back with a new acquisition. The company has announced the acquisition of Maverick Therapeutics, Inc for a pre-negotiated upfront payment as well as potential development and regulatory milestones totaling up to $525 million. This acquisition follows a multi-year collaboration between Takeda and Maverick, signed in 2017.  Maverick Therapeutics is a privately held biopharmaceutical company pioneering conditionally active bispecific T-cell targeted immunotherapies. Its lead candidates are MVC-280 (now TAK-280) and MVC-101 (now TAK-186). TAK-186 is currently in a Phase 1/2 study for the treatment of EFGR-expressing solid... Read More »
Pharmaceutical Firms Are Cleaning House to Profit

Pharmaceutical Firms Are Cleaning House to Profit

There’s no doubt it was an unusually slow February in the healthcare M&A market. Historically, the middle of Q1 tends to dip and then rebound by March, but with less than 100 deals on the books, the rapid spread of the coronavirus, Covid-19, seems to have undercut investor confidence, both big and small. And although some biotech stocks have soared following announcements of their coronavirus treatment efforts, pharmaceutical firms have been relatively quiet. Aside from some players like Gilead (NASDAQ:GILD), which just announced a $4.9 billion acquisition of Forty Seven, Inc. (NASDAQ: FTSV) and whose product remdesivir is seen a hope as a potential treatment for Covid-19, no... Read More »
Bristol-Myers Squibb Surprises with Celgene Deal

Bristol-Myers Squibb Surprises with Celgene Deal

Twas a week before the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Summit, and everything was quiet on the life sciences front. December deal-making hit a wall, with pharmaceutical deals falling 50% compared with last December. Then came Bristol-Myers Squibb’s (NYSE: BMY) announcement it was acquiring Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ: CELG) for approximately $90 billion. This isn’t the biggest pharma or healthcare deal ever, however. The title goes to Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE), for both the largest deal consummated ($114 billion for Warner-Lambert Company in November 1999) and the largest deal to be called off ($160 billion for Allergan plc in November 2015). Those facts make this the third largest... Read More »
The Top 10 Healthcare Deals of 2018. So Far

The Top 10 Healthcare Deals of 2018. So Far

It’s been a busy year for healthcare deal makers, and it’s not over yet. With slightly more than 1,700 deals announced as we went to press, this year’s deal volume has already surpassed 2017’s 1,607 total. Dollar volume is on par with last year’s total of $316.3 billion. At the moment, 2018’s spend stands at $316.9 billion. We will likely see a few more big deals in the remaining weeks of December, just as in December 2017. That was the month that CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) and Aetna (NYSE: AET) announced their $77 billion tie-up, Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health made their mega-merger public, Optum (NYSE: UNH) announced its $4.9 billion acquisition of DaVita Medical Group (NYSE:... Read More »
Buyers Flock to Pharmaceuticals, Again

Buyers Flock to Pharmaceuticals, Again

Pharmaceutical deal activity made a comeback in the second quarter of 2018, with 41 transactions reported, and counting. That is the highest quarterly haul in two years, but what happened to dealmaking in the intervening period? Deal volume dropped off soon after the 2016 presidential election, as companies and investors waited for President Trump’s promised tax overhaul. That legislation came in December 2017, and activity in this sector has picked up accordingly. In fact, the second quarter’s deal volume was 64% greater than that of the first quarter, and 156% better than what was reported in the second quarter of 2017, the sector’s nadir. One of those transactions was a record-breaking... Read More »