The Deal
Sunday, November 8, 
11:31 am

Sullivan & Cromwell's Pagnani on biotech M&A

  Share     E-Mail    Discussion    Print Story

chemicals.jpgThe Deal LLC's Healthcare Dealmaking Symposium kicked off Tuesday morning with a panel discussion of the sector's M&A landscape in 2009.

Keith Pagnani, a partner at law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, commented that although large deals were still happening in the sector there were some major changes from days past.

Continue reading below

Also on Dealscape

"The deals we're seeing now are more defensive than opportunistic," Pagnani said. "They're taking on a different tone."

"The big pharma deals we saw back seven or eight years ago seemed more about the capitalizing on the opportunities of the combining companies," he continued. "The more recent deals seem to be more defensive in nature in that they are an attempt at diversification into other business lines like biotech, consumer, animal health; and away from the core pharma business likely due to the pressures confronting the industry like generic competition, thin R&D pipelines, a more risk averse FDA and potential government reimbursement reductions.

In terms of other deals we're also likely to continue to see, look at the biotech sector; we're going to see the strong preying on the weak, as biotechs see debt coming due."

"In a contracting economy, it's going to be hard for companies to get growth organically," he continued, "so you may see that fueling M&A as well." - George White





Post a comment





The Deal Pipeline

Deal Video


Inside The Deal: Linklaters' Schmidt says how regulators handled Pfizer Inc.'s acquisition of Wyeth is an outlier of how others merger reviews will be conducted.


More video...

Crisis On Wall Street
Technology
Deals of The Decade

Community

Industry Insight

Dealing with frozen bank lending

If your bank is not willing to lend, what can you do as your company continues to seek growth?


Judgment Call

The coming age of the renminbi

The Chinese currency will play an increasingly important role in international commerce and finance.


Industry Insight

Banking on PE investments

Howls of protest greeted the FDIC policy statement, but the financial services industry should get over it.


footspacer.jpg footspacer.jpg footspacer.jpg footspacer.jpg footspacer.jpg


©Copyright 2009, The Deal, LLC. All rights reserved. Please send all technical questions, comments or concerns to the Webmaster.