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Merck & Co to pay $41bn for Schering Plough
Merck & Co is to buy fellow US drug major Schering Plough for $41bn (€32.6bn) to boost its pipeline in the face of impending patent expiry for key products.
At its most recent financial presentation Schering reported a healthy pipeline of late-stage drugs the most promising of which being an anti-clotting candidate called TRA that could hit the shelves as soon as 2011.
While still dwarfed by Pfizer’s $68bn swoop for Wyeth, Merck’s move part of a growing trend on major acquisitions sweeping Big Pharma in the wake of the global downturn and threat of greater generic competition.
Natixis Securities analyst Philippe Lanone told Bloomberg that “It clearly is a year of mergers for pharmaceutical companies,” adding that “they don’t have much of a choice if they are to guarantee EPS growth in the years to come.”
