Abbott and Alere: The Wedding Is Back On!
It seems so long ago. Back in February 2016, Abbott (NYSE: ABT) and Alere Inc. (NYSE: ALR) announced their $5.8 billion deal. Abbott’s board okay’ed paying $56 per common share of Alere, representing a 51% premium to the company’s close on January 28, 2016. Abbott also assumed $2.6 billion of debt. The combination was expected to create a premier point-of-care testing business and to strengthen Abbott’s diagnostics presence. Alere’s main business is its point-of-care diagnostics and services, which are focused on the areas of infectious disease, cardio-metabolic disease, and toxicology. Point of care testing is a $5.5 billion segment, and one... Read More »Sartorius AG Scores Two More Deals
Sartorius AG (FWB: SRT), a German pharmaceutical and laboratory equipment provider, has expanded with the acquisition of a medical device company and a digital health company for a combined total of $392.5 million. Sartorius operates through two divisions: bioprocess solutions and lab products & services. On March 3, 2017, Sartorius acquired privately-held Essen BioScience Inc. from SFW Capital Partners for $320 million. Essen develops and manufactures instruments, software, reagents and consumables which enable researchers to remotely image and quantify a wide variety of cellular processes over time. Through this acquisition, Sartorius significantly expands its portfolio for... Read More »Where Have All the Big Pharma Deals Gone?
The Pharmaceutical sector has experienced a dearth of big deals so far this year. In Q1:16, 40 transactions with pharmaceutical targets were announced, for a total of $46.2 billion. In the first quarter of 2017 (through March 28), only 24 deals (-40%) for pharmaceutical targets have been announced, with a combined total of $10.1 billion (-78%). One factor behind the drop in deals is obvious. The sector came under legislative and consumer scrutiny during the presidential election in 2016, as candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump each decried high prices charged by drug manufacturers, and each vowed to do something about it once elected. President Trump repeated his campaign promise to... Read More »Cerulean Pharma Shifts its Focus to Women’s Health
Cerulean Pharma Inc. (NASDAQ:CERU), a clinical-stage company that develops nanoparticle-drug conjugates (NDCs), sold off its lead assets and is transitioning its focus from oncology to women’s health. The company announced on February 1, 2017 that it had hired investment bank Aquilo Partners, L.P., as its financial advisor to assist in a comprehensive review of strategic alternatives to maximize stockholder value. Then, on March 20, 2017, it announced that it had entered a stock purchase agreement with privately-held Daré Bioscience, in which Daré will own between 51% and 70% of the combined company. Daré Bioscience is a California-based, clinical-stage pharmaceutical company that develops... Read More »Allergan Inks its Third Deal of the Year
As of mid-March, Allergan (NYSE: AGN) has spent nearly $4 billion on three acquisitions in 2017. Although its $2.48 billion purchase of ZELTIQ® Aesthetics, Inc. accounts for most of that total, the pharmaceutical giant hasn’t failed to strengthen its several pipelines in the meantime. On January 9, 2017, it purchased global rights to Assembly Biosciences’ (NASDAQ: ASMB) preclinical compounds for $50 million upfront. The compounds include ABI-M201 and ABI-M301, for ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD), as well as two additional compounds to be identified by Assembly for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Then, on March 14, Allergan entered a strategic research and development... Read More »Schedule a demo
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