Larry and I have been blogging a lot recently about the Pfizer/Wyeth merger and some other possibilities. I want to spend a little more time because I think that it’s fundamental to what’s happening in Big Pharma right now. Also, with Tom Daschle dropping out of consideration for a Cabinet post, President Obama won’t be able to start his agenda for U.S. healthcare policy for a while, so we have some time to focus on M&A activity in the BioPharmaceutical Sector.
While I’m still not a big believer in the sense or economics of mergers in the drug industry, they sure generate a lot of ink in the press. (Or, are they are electrons in the age of blogs? I’m having a difficult time adapting my metaphors to the Internet age.) I get the reasons, falling stock prices, lots of cash on drug company balance sheets, and CEO’s desperate to do anything to appear to be adding growth to the top line. Also, the lack of any real news seems to engender a lot of wishful thinking out there in the media.
Here’s one example. Jim Cramer over at CNBC recently blogged (http://www.cnbc.com/id/28813740 ) about the possibility of a merger between Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT) and Celera (NYSE: CRA). Seems that Abbott’s CEO, Miles White, has been talking about the possibility of acquisitions (But then don’t CEO’s always talk about this? This is Guy’s Third Rule of Being a CEO.), and they are both already working together in the area of personalized medicine. Jim admits freely that he is only speculating here, but, given the article in Barron’s which came out today chiding him about his track record in making predictions, I don’t think I’ll put much into this one. I did find Jim’s summary of personalized medicine interesting and I’ll return to this in a future blog.
Meanwhile, Mike Huckman is keeping hopes alive over at his blog (http://www.cnbc.com/id/29014145 ) about the possibility of Roche (SWX Europe: ROG) acquiring Genentech (NYSE: DNA) in a hostile takeover. This was his second prediction for the pharmaceutical industry in 2009. Now, I’m not picking on Mike. I have a lot of respect for him. But, looking at his photo on his blog, I think I can safely say that I’m a few years older than him. OK, maybe more than a few years. Anyway, my point is that since 1976 when Robert Swanson and Dr. Herbert Boyer launched Genentech, I’ve been hearing people talk about a hostile takeover. It’s a perennial. Also, as I’ve blogged before, this kind of deal doesn’t make sense to me.
This week, Merck's (NYSE: MRK) CEO, Richard Clark stepped back from their long standing high and mighty point of view against mergers and "hinted" (http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/02/03/as-sales-slump-merck-ceo-clark-looks-to-acquisitions/ ) by saying “I don’t think any CEO in this environment can categorically rule out any transaction,” Clark said, according to Dow Jones Newswires. “There are opportunities across the whole spectrum we would look at.” We're not that clear on the position Andrew Witty, Glaxo's new CEO is taking first saying that there will be no acquisitions, and then suggesting "bolt-ons" and then suggesting that acquisitions will take a prominent role as Glaxo looks to back away from the traditional big pharma "Blockbuster" model and move further into consumer, vaccine and emerging markets (http://www.natap.org/2009/newsUpdates/010909_05.htm ). It may be of some interest that almost simultaneously and representing only about 1% of the value of the Pfizer-Wyeth deal, Glaxo acquired UCB's emerging market business for $687 million. In the meanwhile, Astellas launched a $1 billion hostile tender for CV Therapeutics (http://www.dealmakersforum.com/) and rumors continue to abound about a potential BristolMyers-Squibb-Sanofi hook up. Quite a week!
Other possibilities exist including Carl Icahn's continuing pursuit of "enhancing shareholder value" (e.g. sale to a Big Pharma company) at Biogen-Idec . That’s the fun thing about this kind of market, anyone can speculate about anything, even me. Let’s see what happens, I think that this is going to be a very interesting year.
As always, we welcome your feedback. Please contact us at larryrothmansblog@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
Contributed by Guy de Lastin
No comments:
Post a Comment