Don and George;
FWIW I read one newspaper analysis(sorry, don't recall details right now off the top of my head :) ) which was rather negative on these big pharm megamergers in their impact on the biotechs. The jist of the article was that these mergers are indeed for consolidation and elimination of redundancies including research duplication. Thus, two giant firms, each with its own biotech partnering deals, will be looking at duplication of research goals and would eventually eliminate one of the partnerships (or perhaps not enter into a contemplated one). Also, such mergers leave fewer potential partners for the biotechs that seek one. Thus, the overall effect is negative, with no clear positives in sight. The article did not suggest that such mergers were disastrous for the biotech industry, just generally unfavorable. Also, megamergers do have the industry wide effect of putting everybody on hold until matters clear up more, again with generally unfavorable impact on biotechs.
A contrary opinion I have heard is that these biotech-big pharma agreements, although perhaps necessary in many cases, are generally bad of biotechs because they simply tend not to get enough for their technology and they are better off going it alone in the long run. i.e. no big pharma deals is actually a good sign for a young biotech. Of course, it is economically impossible for a biotech to market a small number of products world-wide on its own, so at some point it must enter into a marketing agreement. The later the better.
David |
