Grandes fusiones “magnifican fracasos”...

En línea con lo “posteado” días atrás este articulo de William Haseltine* es bastante esclarecedor sobre el “racional” y las “implicaciones” futuras de los megamergers que vivimos estos días en la industria a nivel global.

The fact that so many companies are now merging reflects the failure of each company to discover and develop its own replacement pipeline. To maintain growth, a pharmaceutical company must either produce enough new products to replace those that have gone off-patent or acquire rights to distribute drugs created by others. This is clearly not happening on a large enough scale. A small number of patented drugs, each with annual sales of $1 to $5 billion, accounts for most of the profits of the large pharmaceutical companies, and these profits are vanishing as the patents expire. Meanwhile, the number of new drugs approved for sale annually has steadily decreased over the past 15 years.

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This emphasis on the bottom line even influences the way clinical trials are designed. Companies are in a position to choose how each new drug is deployed, and drugs that are approved for limited use have limited market potential. Therefore, most clinical trials are designed to optimize sales, not to optimize the chance that a new drug will be approved for its most effective, if limited, use.
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In summary, the current wave of mega-mergers does not solve but rather exacerbates the deeper problems of the pharmaceutical industry. Despite the industry's appetite, its emptying product supply will never be filled without a reliable research-and-development engine. Radical restructuring, not merger mania, is the need of our time.

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*William Haseltine is a scientist, businessman and philanthropist. For much of the '70s, '80s and '90s he was a professor at Harvard Medical School, where he researched cancer and HIV/AIDS. He is also the founder of several companies, including Human Genome Sciences, where he served as Chairman and CEO. He is President of the William A Haseltine Foundation for medical Sciences and the Arts. He lives in Washington DC and Manhattan and travels widely.