Although 2020 was a tough year for the biopharma industry — and most other industries as well — it appeared to rebound significantly in mid-2021. However, biotech stocks are generally getting hammered during 2022, although to be fair, the entire stock market is down.
At the 2021 virtual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ chief executive officer Reshma Kewalramani said the company is looking to buy “mid- and late-stage assets.”
Life sciences mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity totaled $159 billion in 2020, down from $306 billion in 2019, reaching one of the lowest levels since 2014, according to the 2021 EY M&A Firepower report
Sanofi is rumored to have a $50 billion budget for mergers and acquisitions and is taking a look at U.S.-based biotech companies, including South San Francisco-based Principia Biopharma.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission gave the green light to the $63 billion merger of AbbVie and Allergan.
First-quarter 2020 earnings reports are coming out, the stock market remains volatile and much of the world is still on lockdown. In this challenging environment, there are business opportunities abound, “but investors are taking a hard look at their checkbooks,” Keith Bliss, managing partner and CEO of iQ Capital, told BioSpace.
Mergers and acquisitions in the pharmaceutical industry are not only a positive for the company that has made a bid for another company, but it is also good for the industry as a whole because of increases in efficiency across the entire field, according to Atlas Venture partner Bruce Booth.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. offered to divest Celgene Corp.’s psoriasis treatment Otezla to allay concerns raised by the U.S. competition regulator, and pushed back the closing of their $74 billion deal.
Bayer shares fell by as much as 5 percent after a California couple were awarded more than $2 billion in the largest U.S. jury penalty over allegations the company’s Roundup weed killer causes cancer.
The U.S. patent office rejected a filing by Alvogen Pine Brook for a review challenging patents on Celgene’s blockbuster myeloma drug Revlimid.
