CVS Wins Omnicare Auction

by | May 26, 2015 6:33 pm | Pharmaceuticals | 0 comments

Omnicare Inc. (NYSE: OCR) put itself on the market in April, with bids due in May. At the time, its market value was estimated to be about $8.5 billion. CVS Health Corp. (NYSE: CVS), Express Scripts Holding Co. (NASDAQ: ESRX), McKesson Corp. (NYSE: MCK) and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. (NASDAQ: WBA) were expected to kick the tires. Last week, CVS won the deal with $12.7 billion, including $2.3 billion in debt. Omnicare’s big draw is its specialty pharmaceutical business focused on assisted living and long-term care facilities. The deal follows UnitedHealth Group’s (NYSE: UNH) $12.8 billion acquisition of pharmacy benefits manager Catamaran Corp. (NASDAQ: CTRX) in March and Rite Aid... Read More »

Catamaran Sails into OptumRx’s Harbor

by | Apr 4, 2015 3:15 pm | Pharmaceuticals | 0 comments

As the free-standing pharmacy care business of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), OptumRx has serious backing when the right target comes along. Last week, the right one came along in the form of Catamaran Corporation (NASDAQ: CTRX), the nation’s fourth-largest provider of pharmacy benefit management services and healthcare information technology solutions. The offer was $61.50 per share, or approximately $12.8 billion. The deal leaves No. 1 pharmacy benefits provider Express Scripts Holdings (NASDAQ: ESRX) as the last holdout in the field, and some analysts are cheering for a major pharmacy retail chain to make an offer. Don’t look at Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD), though. It just paid $2 billion for... Read More »

Year’s Biggest Billion-Dollar Deals Top $64 Billion

by | Mar 16, 2015 8:16 pm | Biotechnology, Pharmaceuticals | 0 comments

Already in 2015, we’ve recorded 11 billion-dollar-plus deals, for a total of $64.4 billion. Thanks to the $21 billion AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV) bid for Pharmacyclics (NASDAQ: PCYC), the biotechnology sector accounted for $27.5 billion of those big deals. Pharmaceuticals, with four billion-plus transactions, still ranks first, with combined spending of $30.45 billion.  Read More »

PE Firms Make Grand Exits in the PBM Sector

by | Mar 2, 2015 6:37 pm | Other Services | 0 comments

After a fairly quiet 2014, M&A in the pharmacy benefit management (PBM) segment saw two big deals go down in February. First, Rite Aid Corp. (NYSE: RAD) paid $2 billion for EnvisionRx, a portfolio company of TPG. Last week, Catamaran Corp. (NASDAQ: CTRX) added to its own portfolio with an all-cash, $405 million deal for Healthcare Solutions, Inc., a portfolio company of Brazos Private Equity Partners LLC. Healthcare Solutions specializes in pharmacy benefits and other services in the workers’ compensation market, making for a strong addition to Catamaran’s previous acquisitions: Restat, LLC, which provides PBM services for self-funded employers, third-party administrators,... Read More »