Biopharma M&A got a big boost moneywise in 2019.
The three largest—Bristol-Myers Squibb for Celgene, AbbVie for Allergan, and
Amgen for Celgene’s psoriasis drug Otezla—together delivered more than $150
billion. Valued at $74 billion, the Celgene takeover also broke records to
become the biggest pharma deal ever.
Oncology was still a popular theme, stringing through
a whole year of big M&A headlines, from the combination of cancer bigwigs
Bristol-Myers and Celgene, announced in January, to buyouts of earlier-stage
companies, including Merck & Co.’s $2.7 billion ArQule deal and Sanofi’s
$2.5 billion Synthorx takeover, both of which went public in December.
Scattered in between were Eli Lilly’s $8 billion
buyout of Loxo Oncology, Pfizer’s $11.4 billion tie-up with Array BioPharma,
and some major licensing deals such as AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo’s
potential $6.9 billion partnership on now-FDA-approved HER2-targeting
antibody-drug conjugate Enhertu.