Top Biopharma Mergers Deals 2012

From a strictly numbers point of view, last year's results are pretty obvious. As the accompanying chart indicates, 2012 was the slowest in 5 years in terms of both number of deals and dollars on the table. 

 To Christian Dokomajilar, manager and senior biotech analyst at Deloitte Recap, that actually bodes well for 2013. Having digested some of the largest acquisitions in pharma history, gotten costs out and much of the patent cliff behind them, pharma and biotech execs may again be ready to tango. 

 "There are only so many megacompanies you can acquire in a given period," Dokomajilar says. 

 He points to deals like Pfizer's  $68 billion acquisition of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in 2009, or Merck  paying $41.1 billion the same year for Schering-Plough. Just a couple of years ago, Sanofi bought Genzyme for $20 billion."M&A is definitely in a period of consolidation as far as pharma is concerned," after some of the megamergers of recent years. (Más)

Eric Palmer