Will Roche Kill Independent Genentech?

Roche has offered to buy the 45% stake of Genentech it doesn’t already own with a $89/share, $43.7B (8.8% premium) offer.
The initial Roche/Genentech deal brokered in the 90’s has been key to Roche’s success in the last few years. Upon first blush, this deal seems a natural fit and a no-brainer for Roche but [...]

Shire Ponies Up For Jerini

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Shire and its well known acquisition strategy are at it again, this time buying Berlin-based, Jerini for $521.2M (a 71% premium).
The rationale for the deal was the addition of Firazyr, an orphan drug treatment for hereditary angioedema (HAE), which received a not approvable letter from the FDA in April but has an EU [...]

Sanofi Gets Into Generics Game

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Sanofi-Aventis plans to make a $2.57 billion (10% premium) offer for Czech generic drugmaker Zentiva, trumping a bid from financial group PPF. Sanofi’s move on Zentiva follows Daiichi Sankyo’s $4.6B offer for India’s top generic company, Ranbaxy.
Generic drug production has traditionally been shunned by large pharmaceutical companies but is now receiving increased interest [...]

Pfizer Waging Battle Over Ranbaxy??

 
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I was on a plane all day, headed to the BIO-LES seminar and didn’t get a chance to read the wire, so there is really no need to throw in my two cents at this point but the WSJ reported that Pfizer may be interested in topping the Daichii bid for Ranbaxy.  
Though [...]

Daiichi Sankyo Goes Generic with Ranbaxy Purchase

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The generic drug business is growing twice as fast as branded medicines so it is no wonder that J&J, Novartis (with the purchase of Hexal and Eon to form Sandoz) and now Daiichi Sankyo are interested.
Daiichi Sankyo announced today that they will buy a controlling interest (50.1%) in India’s Ranbaxy Laboratories for ~$4.6B, [...]

Ipsen Buys Into North America

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So how much does it cost for an EU pharmaceutical company to break into the North American market?  
Ipsen can answer that question in three deals and ~$450M.
First, Ipsen acquired the shares of Tercica they didn’t own.
 Second, they bought the US subsidiary of the UK based Vernalis and the rights to Apokyn (apomorphine)and [...]

Novartis Buys Protez For Superbug Defense

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Novartis AG strengthened its specialty medicines development portfolio by buying the private, Protez Pharmaceuticals, today for $100M upfront and the potential for up to $400M dependent on meeting certain developmental milestones.
PZ-601, the lead compound, is a broad-spectrum beta-lactam, for the potential treatment of bacterial infections including complicated skin and skin structure infections (cSSSI) [...]

BMS Acquires Kosan Biosciences for 233% Premium

Rumors about BMS being acquired by a larger drug maker have been floating around for some time now but today, BMS gets to play the big pocketbook.
BMS and Kosan announced that they have signed a merger agreement for $5.50 per share (a 233% premium over Kosan’s previous day [...]

Daichii To Buy U3 for $235M

(BioSpace) Daichii Sankyo bought German based U3 this morning for $235M (150M euro) and I think it’s a pretty good deal for Daichii. U3 is a mAb, receptor tyrosine kinase targeting company with a few candidates in preclinical studies (see below):

Product
Description
Product Type
Status

U3-1287 (AMG-888)

Receptor tyrosine kinase [...]

Rumor Mill: Pfizer Buying MediGene?

The German based, MediGene hit a 52 week high yesterday on rumors that they are in discussions with the drug giant Pfizer. MediGene is just the latest of half a dozen companies mentioned in the same sentence as Pfizer in the last few months (others include Biogen, Shire, King and NicOx).
In the past year, [...]

Intercell AG Strengthens Vaccine Business

Intercell AG, a Vienna based biotechnology company which makes adjuvants for vaccines, bought Iomai yesterday for approximately $189M ($6.60 per share, or a 126% premium over the previous day’s close). Intercell, which has a BLA pending with the FDA for a Japanese encephalitis vaccine, will gain full rights to Iomai’s late stage Travelers’ Diarrhea [...]

Icahn Steals The Future of Enzon Pharmaceuticals

Enzon Pharmaceuticals, on the reported urging of uber-investor Carl Icahn, will spin off a NewCo along with the majority of the company’s core technology (PEGylation), their entire published preclinical pipeline (i.e.; their RNA antagonist oncology portfolio) and $150m of funding from Enzon. Not a bad way to start a company, right?
Maybe I’m way off [...]

Bristol-Myers Squibb To Be Acquired By… [Insert Name Here]??

In a previous post, I speculated on reasons for shedding of non-core pharmaceutical assets by BMS. Don’t read it. I was grasping at straws and missed the real connection, I think BMS is divesting non-biopharm assets because it will soon be acquired. The company’s stock is down 11% from this January [...]

BMS Sheds ConvaTec for $4.1 billion

A few hours after I had written this post about the Pfizer/Esperion spin-off signaling a changing of the times in big pharma, I see I this story about Bristol-Myers Squibb divesting ConvaTec to some private equity groups (Nordic Capital VII and Avista Capital Partners) for $4.1 billion dollars. This press release jogged my memory and [...]

Does the Esperion Spin-Off Signal the Start of New R&D Era?

What a difference time makes.  Pfizer acquired Esperion roughly 4 years ago at a 53% premium and a price tag of $1.3 billion dollars.  Yesterday, Esperion was spun off from Pfizer and raised ~$23m from VCs to continue operation, with no other financial terms disclosed.  Esperion had been operating as a separate research division inside [...]