AZ shuns mega-mergers but still open to smaller deals
pharmafile | April 21, 2009 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | AZ
AstraZeneca will not follow this year's emerging pharma trend towards mega-mergers and may instead look to smaller-scale deals, according to its chief executive.
Interviewed by the Financial Times, David Brennan said the company's view is "more oriented toward collaboration than consolidation", and that activity elsewhere would not change its plan.
Thi syear has already witnessed huge consolidation across big pharma, with Pfizer paying $65 billion for Wyeth, Merck & Co offering $46bn for Schering Plough, and Roche's successful $48.8bn bid for Genentech.
The activity has prompted speculation about acquisition plans at other key companies, but Brennan, now twice drawn on the subject, repeated that large-scale mergers are not part of AZ's plan.
He told the FT: "If there were acquisition opportunities for AstraZeneca, they would be in the small company, product, technology side of things, not a large-scale transaction to take out capacity. That's not what we're looking for."
He said he did not feel isolated with all the big deals going on around him, and referring to other recent mergers, he said: "I think a couple of the deals that have happened just match up some needs or some prior relationships that a couple of those companies had before that".
But Brennan has not ruled out all consolidation at AZ, particularly in late stage pipeline opportunities, though he admitted this was a goal for most companies, and that such openings are "are few and far between".
This echoed his previous comments that the company's first priority was to strengthen its pipeline, and his preferred method for this was through licensing deals and small-scale acquisitions.
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