The Pharma Industry Elephants Dance

28 April, 2014, by ClinCaptureTeam

Big Pharma companies are playing high stakes game of swapping and selling off assets to improve the future of their product lines and company revenues and profitability. Pfizer is interested in acquiring AstraZeneca to boost its oncology pipeline. But the Astra Zeneca immunotherapy drugs are in early stage of development so it’s a high risk business initiative. See details of potential takeover which AstraZeneca isn’t interested in doing so far in article “AstraZeneca cancer pipeline seen as draw for Pfizer” by Ben Hirschlerat.

A large European company Novartis AG is thinking big by offloading their lower performing businesses and investing big in cancer. The goal is to increase operating income in the short term to overcome losses from Gleevec which will be going off patent. It’s selling its vaccine business to GSK and forming JV with them that is GSK majority owned. Novartis acquired GSK’s 11 marketed cancer drugs and one Phase II product. Other deals include Lilly’s purchase of the Novartis animal health business. Novartis’ outlay after the deals between the three giants, including upfront payments and near-term milestones, could reach $5.3 billion by the time the deals close. BioCentury has nice article entitled “Bigger is Better” April 28, 2014 detailing the deals. Also see Bloomberg article “Novartis to Buy Glaxo Cancer Drugs, Sell Animal Health” April 22, 2014.

Hopefully, the opportunity assessments behind these major business moves will be sound as they these transactions are sure to impact negatively on employment levels as the “elephants” dance.

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Reposted from Audrey Erbes’ blog: Audrey’s Network

Audrey’s Network includes Bay Area bioscience professionals from all sectors who are working in broad array of functions in the industry. The group originated, first, with members sourced from Audrey’s UC Extension intensive courses in Bioscience Business and Marketing (now numbering over former 1,250 students), the Syntex Syva Alumni Association, the Bio2Device Group (now has over 1,000 members) and other industry professional groups and individuals with whom Audrey has worked. The mission is to assist industry professionals continue to keep up-to-date in their fields through “sharpening the saw” regularly and building and maintaining a vibrant network.