Big Pharma Pays Big for Biotech Pipelines

by | Sep 1, 2016 6:43 pm | Biotechnology, Pharmaceuticals

The pharmaceutical industry has largely given up on in-house research and development, saying that the R&D timeline is too costly, long and uncertain to fund with shareholders’ money. The industry has gone from bolt-on acquisitions of smaller companies with marketed products to battling it out for clinical-stage drug candidates. What’s surprised some industry observers is that these acquirers are now targeting early-stage and even pre-clinical drug candidates, to boost their own production pipelines, but as a way to stymie the competition, too. Pharmaceutical mergers and acquisitions hit a peak in 2014, with 188 deals (up 25% year-over-year) and $213.3 billion in spending (up 220%... Read More »

Pfizer Buys Medivation and More

by | Aug 24, 2016 8:15 am | Pharmaceuticals

Forget those early- to mid-stage clinical candidates. Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) jumped the line with its $13.5 billion deal for oncology drug maker Medivation Inc. (NASDAQ: MDVN). The target’s primary product is XTANDI® (enzalutamide), an androgen receptor inhibitor, the leading novel hormone therapy for the treatment of prostate cancer. Pfizer will pay $81.50 per share in existing cash, a 21% premium to Medivation’s closing stock price on Friday, August 19, 2016. This deal ends months of bidding for Medivation, which began in April with Sanofi SA’s $52.50 per share (about $9 billion) offer. Medivation turned down the overture, and Sanofi eventually raised its bid to $58.50... Read More »

Pharma M&A Is all about Options

by | May 11, 2016 8:42 am | Pharmaceuticals

The days of mega-mergers in the pharmaceutical sector aren’t necessarily over, but those deals will be fewer and farther between, going forward. Nearly 60 deals have been announced in 2016 through the middle of May, and just 17 have an entire company as the target. The largest, so far, is Shire’s (NASDAQ: SHPG) $32 billion takeover of Baxalta (NYSE: BXLT), announced in January. The rest are either collaborations on product candidates, rights or license deals for marketed products or clinical-stage candidates, even the rights to royalties. That’s Royalty Pharma’s $1.1 billion deal for the royalty interest in Xtandi, which is being sold by a co-owner, UCLA, where... Read More »

AbbVie Gets Ahead of the Bad News Curve

by | Mar 10, 2016 5:08 pm | Pharmaceuticals

On March 11, Sanofi (NYSE: SNY)  and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: REGN) announced that an experimental rheumatoid arthritis therapy (salrilumab) helped patients more than AbbVie Inc.’s (NYSE: ABBV) Humira in a late-stage trial. But AbbVie already had a new deal in place, a collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim, that was announced on March 7. Under terms of the agreement, AbbVie will make an initial upfront payment of $595 million to BI, which will be eligible to receive additional development and regulatory milestone payments and royalties on net sales of any drugs developed from this collaboration. At the center of the deal is BI 655066, an anti-IL-23 antibody now in Phase 3... Read More »

Hanmi Pharmaceutical Deals with Sanofi, Janssen

by | Nov 10, 2015 9:30 am | Pharmaceuticals

Korean pharmaceutical company Hanmi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. popped up on the healthcare M&A radar last week with two collaboration announcements. First was an agreement with French drug maker Sanofi (NYSE: SNY) to grant the worldwide license to a yet-to-be developed portfolio of experimental, long-acting diabetes treatments. Sanofi paid an upfront fee of €400 million ($434,820,000) and is eligible for up to €3.5 billion in development, registration and sales milestone, as well as double digit royalties on net sales. The second deal, with Janssen Pharmacticals, Inc. (NYSE: JNJ), was for the rights to oxyntomodulin-based therapies, including Hanmi’s NM12525A. Janssen paid $105... Read More »