Reading the news sometimes gives me a disorienting sense of déjà vu. I know I wrote that last week, but it’s true again for a different reason. Today, French heavyweight sanofi aventis (Paris) announced that it was acquiring a majority stake in Shantha Biotechnics (Hyderabad, India). This new development follows a now-familiar pattern. Read more »

Reading the news sometimes gives me a disorienting sense of déjà vu. I felt it again when I read that Ranbaxy (Gurgaon, Haryana, India) had recalled a batch of its acne drug isotretinoin after the US Food and Drug Administration found that the product’s dissolution-test results were out of specification. Didn’t this happen once before? Read more »

Eli Lilly & Co. (Indianapolis) CEO John Lechleiter earlier this week told the Financial Times that he is not interested in becoming part of the recent mega-merger trend (see Pfizer+Wyeth, Merck+Schering-Plough and Roche+Genentech). Rumors and speculation have had some thinking Lilly+Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) would be the next big thing, but Lechleiter specifically ended rumors of that combination and remained critical of Big Pharma’s recent big deals. Read more »

How do you boost a flagging pipeline? One strategy is to enlist more researchers to find promising drug candidates. Two heads are better than one, and the more minds applied to the task, the more likely they will find increasingly elusive new therapies. The Pfizer–Wyeth and Merck–Schering Plough mergers are partly based on this premise.

Trouble is, the premise might not hold water. Read more »

It’s déjà vu all over again. Little more than a month after Pfizer (New York) announced that it would acquire Wyeth (Madison, NJ), Merck (Whitehouse Station, NJ) and Schering-Plough (Kenilworth, NJ) have unveiled their own merger agreement. The combined company will be called Merck and be based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey. Schering-Plough CEO Fred Hassan will help during the merger, but Merck’s CEO Richard Clark will lead the combined company. Read more »

Pfizer’s pending $68-billion merger with Wyeth has raised the question on possible suitors in another merger among the pharmaceutical majors. A recent article in the New York Times gained the input of Wall Street analysts, who speculate that Merck, Sanofi-Aventis, and Johnson & Johnson may be next in line to seek acquisitions among their Big Pharma brethen or in select biotechnology companies. Read more »

As Roche promised earlier this month, it commenced a tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Genentech it doesn’t own for $86.50 cash per share. And as Genentech promised, it evaluated the offer and issued a statement to stockholders on Monday. As expected, Genentech rejected the offer. Read more »

As my colleague recently mentioned, new doesn’t always mean better. That became true last week for anyone waiting for a new offer from Roche to acquire Genentech. Roche announced its new plan to buy the company last Friday: Roche will approach Genentech’s shareholders directly with an offer of $86.50 per share or $42 billion. Read more »

ImClone and Eli Lilly announced Monday that Lilly offered to buy the company for $6.5 billion. Lilly turned out to be the $70-per-share mystery suitor, as was rumored last week. The acquisition will strengthen Lilly’s oncology portfolio, which includes “Gemzar” and “Alimta,” and now, ImClone’s “Erbitux.” Read more »

When it rejected both of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s bids of $60, then $62 per share, ImClone said it had been approached by “a large pharmaceutical company” offering $70 per share, or $6.1 billion, subject to due diligence. Some wondered whether this was a bluff. Now, it seems the mystery suitor may be closer to owning the New York-based biotech company. Read more »