Under the background of the continuous spread of the pandemic, the pharmaceutical and health industry has become the focus of global attention, from being affected by the epidemic to shouldering the heavy responsibility of fighting the epidemic until the resumption of stable development, major pharmaceutical companies have reconsidered their corporate strategies in their entirety, enriched and strengthened core pipelines, divested non-core assets, and major pharmaceutical companies have become more cautious about the choice of mergers and acquisitions.
Quantitatively, M&A deals in 2021 have not stood out in recent years. "Pharmaceutical Health News" takes stock at the end of the year, based on the transaction volume, introduces the important M&A transactions of the year one by one, from which we can glimpse the development trend of the global health industry.
M&A transactions completed in 2021 –
| Thermo Fisher completes acquisition of PPD
Thermo Fisher Scientific, a leader in scientific services, has completed the acquisition of CRO (Serving Global Contract Research Organization) company PPD for $17.4 billion in cash and assumed approximately $3.5 billion in net debt, a transaction worth a total of approximately $20.9 billion. PPD is committed to providing clinical development and laboratory services to the pharmaceutical industry, biotechnology, medical devices and government agencies. PPD ranks fifth in terms of revenue in the global CRO top 10 list.
| Siemens Healther completes acquisition of Varian
Siemens Healthineers has successfully completed its acquisition of Varian Medical Systems for a total consideration of approximately $16.4 billion. Varian becomes the new business unit of Siemens Healther. With Varian's addition, Siemens Healthers will have the most comprehensive product portfolio in the field of medical technology, which will take the global cancer fight to a whole new level. The combined company will create a unique and highly integrated portfolio of medical imaging, laboratory diagnostics, artificial intelligence and therapeutics.
| AstraZeneca completes acquisition of Arley Brothers
AstraZeneca completed the acquisition of Alexion Pharmaceuticals, marking the company's entry into the rare disease drug space. AstraZeneca's current Chief Financial Officer, Marc Dunoyer, will become Brothers Alex' CEO. AstraZeneca paid approximately $13.3 billion in cash and 236,321,411 new AstraZeneca shares (approximately 94% of which will be represented by the new AstraZeneca American Depositary Shares (ads)). The LOGO of Brothers Alex has been added to the words AstraZeneca Rare Diseases. Brother Arlix's stock has been delisted from the NASDAQ stock market.
| Baxter completes acquisition of Hilo Holdings
Baxter International has completed its acquisition of medical device maker Hill-Rom Holdings, and Baxter paid $156.00 in cash for each share of Hillrom's common stock for a purchase price of $10.5 billion (based on the number of shares hillrom closed at the time of its close). Baxter will also take on Hillrom's outstanding debt, with a total corporate value of approximately $12.5 billion in transactions. Founded in 1915, Hilo manufactures medical equipment such as hospital beds and patient monitoring devices.
| Merck completes acquisition of Acceleron Pharma
Merck (MSD) announced the completion of its acquisition of Acceleron Pharma, with a total stake valued at nearly $11.5 billion. Acceleron is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of anti-cancer drugs and rare drugs for rare diseases; currently the pipeline products are mainly aimed at the respiratory system and hematology. Merck's acquisition will complement the company's cardiovascular pipeline.
| Danaher completes acquisition of Aldevron
Danaher announced that it has completed its $9.6 billion cash acquisition of biotech company Aldevron. Aldevron will operate as an independent operating company and its brand will join the Danaher Life Sciences platform. Founded in the United States in 1998 by Michael Chambers and John Ballantyne, Aldevron serves biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, producing high-quality plasmid DNA, mRNA, and recombinant proteins for research and development, clinical trials, and commercial applications.
| Mena completed the acquisition of Grail
Illumina has completed a $7.1 billion acquisition of Grail, a manufacturer of cancer testing tests. The acquisition was made to acquire Grail's flagship product, Galleri, blood testing technology. The technique is used to diagnose cancer at an early stage when it is easier to treat. Inmena founded GRAIL in 2016 and spun it off to become an independent company. The first employees of GRAIL were all from Inmena, which still holds 12% of GRAIL's shares. The acquisition is a vertical acquisition.
| Fujifilm completes acquisition of Hitachi Diagnostic Imaging
FUJIFILM completed the acquisition process for Hitachi Manufacturing's diagnostic imaging-related business for approximately USD 1.7 billion, marking the official establishment of Fujifilm Healthcare, a new company established by Hitachi to inherit the related business, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of fujifilm Group. With this acquisition, Fujifilm's medical business will be expanded to include a wide range of product lines such as CT, MRI, X-ray imaging systems, ultrasound diagnostic equipment, endoscopy, in vitro diagnostic systems, and PACS, providing a one-stop comprehensive solution based on the actual needs of medical institutions.
M&A deals announced in 2021 –
In addition to the large mergers and acquisitions that have already been completed, Australian blood products giant CSL has announced its largest acquisition to date. In addition, this year, Pfizer, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, Roche, Boston Scientific and other giants have also announced a series of small and medium-sized mergers and acquisitions.
| Oracle will acquire electronic medical records company Cerner
Oracle announced the acquisition of seine Cerner, an electronic medical records company, for $95 per share in cash, for a total of about $28.3 billion. The deal is expected to close in 2022, and by bringing massive amounts of health data into its cloud services, Cerner can help Oracle boost its presence in healthcare. It was the largest all-cash transaction in Oracle's history and the largest acquisition since 2016.
| Blackstone and other consortiums agreed to buy medical supplies company Medline
A consortium of Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman will receive a majority stake in Medline Industries, a medical supplies company. The Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) will also be investing as part of the partnership. The deal, including debt, is worth as much as $34 billion and will also include a $17 billion "equity transfer check." It will be one of the largest leveraged buyouts ever made. The company is run by the billionaire Mills family. Upon completion of the transaction, the Mills family will remain Medline's largest single shareholder, and Medline's senior management team will not change.
| CSL agreed to acquire Vifor
Australian blood products giant CSL will acquire all publicly held shares of Vifor PharmaAG for CHF 167 (approximately $179.25) per share, with a total stake in Vifor Pharma worth CHF 10.9 billion (approximately US$11.7 billion), which will enable CSL to obtain patents on Vifor's technology for the treatment of iron deficiency, kidney and heart and kidney diseases, as well as production sites in Switzerland and Portugal, expanding its product line in the development phase to 37, This is a 32% increase over the current product line. Abbas Hussain, a former non-executive director of CSL who resigned from the CSL Board of Directors in June 2021, was appointed as the new CEO of Vifor Pharma.
| Pfizer's acquisition of Arena has reached a definitive agreement
Pfizer announced the acquisition of biopharmaceutical company Arena Pharmaceuticals, a deal that valued Arena at $6.7 billion. Arena's products include multiple promising development-stage drug candidates in the fields of gastroenterology, dermatology and cardiology, including etrasimod, for a range of immunoinflammatory diseases, including gastrointestinal and skin diseases. Arena has established a robust etrasimod development program that includes two Phase III studies for the treatment of ulcerative colitis (UC), a Phase II/III study for the treatment of Crohn's disease, a Phase III study planned for the treatment of atopic dermatitis, and an ongoing Phase II study on eosinophilic esophagitis and alopecia areata. In addition, Pfizer agreed to a deal worth about $2.3 billion to acquire Trillium Therapeutics, a tumor biotechnology company focused on blood cancer treatment.
| Novo Nordisk will acquire Dicerna
Novo Nordisk will acquire Dicerna Pharmaceuticals for $3.3 billion. Dicerna, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of experimental RNA interference (RNAi) therapeutics, has been a research partner since 2019, leveraging Dicerna's proprietary GalXC RNAi platform technology to discover and develop RNAi therapies. Dicerna's RNAi technology platform complements Novo Nordisk's existing technology platform by acquiring intracellular disease targets across hepatic and extrahepatic cell and tissue types.
Germany's Bayer Group will acquire U.S. biopharmaceutical company Vividion Therapeutics for up to $2 billion to strengthen its ability to discover new therapies and increase the value of its drug pipeline.
French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi has announced that it will acquire U.S. biopharmaceutical company Kadmon Holdings for $1.9 billion. The acquisition supports Sanofi's strategy to continue to grow its generic core assets and will immediately incorporate Rezurock (belumosudil) into its transplant drug portfolio.
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche has agreed to acquire U.S. molecular diagnostic testing company GenMark Diagnostics for $1.8 billion to obtain a provider of rapid detection tools for infectious diseases, including Covid-19. GenMark's dipsticks can detect multiple pathogens from a single patient sample.
Boston Scientific announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Baylis Medical Company with an advance payment of $1.75 billion. The acquisition will expand the reach of Boston Scientific's electrophysiological and structural cardiology portfolio, introducing radio frequency (RF) NRG and VersaCross atrial septal puncture platforms, as well as a family of medical wires, sheaths, and dilators required for left atrial pathways.
In 2021, the giants have announced the spin-off plan -
In fact, mergers and acquisitions and spin-offs (divestitures) are common business operations. In order to better survive and develop in the competition, pharmaceutical companies must be more focused and establish a more complete product portfolio around specific areas, and the continuous spread of the epidemic has also affected the inherent business scope of major pharmaceutical companies to varying degrees. Because of this, the divestiture of some business segments or R&D pipelines is also an inevitable choice for pharmaceutical companies, which has become a new trend in the pharmaceutical industry in recent years.
| Johnson & Johnson announced the spin-off of its consumer healthcare business and its independent listing
Johnson & Johnson, the world's largest healthcare company, is undergoing its biggest restructuring in 135 years by divesting its healthcare business, which is dominated by Bondi Band-Aids, Technold Pharmaceuticals and Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder, and going public independently. Johnson & Johnson will focus more on the research and development of drugs and medical devices. In addition, Alex Gorsky, CEO of Johnson & Johnson who has been at the helm of Johnson & Johnson for nearly a decade, will step down on January 3, 2022, when Joaquin Duato, Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee, will take over as Johnson & Johnson's CEO. In recent years, including during the pandemic, business, customers and markets have diverged considerably. In terms of sales, Johnson & Johnson decided to divest the high-margin but risky prescription drug and medical device businesses from the "Big Mac" system in order to maintain its continued growth and leading position. Meanwhile, CEO Alex Gorsky said the split decision had nothing to do with the tatsumi class action lawsuit.
| GE Electric announced the spin-off of GE Healthcare, GE Aviation and GE Energy into three separate public companies
Veteran U.S. giant General Electric (GE) announced plans to split. GE Healthcare, GE Airlines, and GE Energy Transformation will be split into three separate public companies. General Electric (GE) plans to spin off GE Healthcare in 2023, with a greater focus on precision medicine after the split. After GE's medical division split off and became independent, lawrence Culp, the current chairman and CEO of the company, will also serve as the non-executive chairman of the new company.
| Novartis announced that it will spin off or sell Sandoz
NOVARTIS announced it would split or sell sandoz, its generics business unit. Previously, due to the new crown pneumonia epidemic, Sandoz's sales in the United States fell sharply, and it has not met expectations, and sales in the United States in the third quarter of 2021 fell sharply by 20%. As Novartis focuses on cutting-edge drugs to treat cancer and other ailments, the company has spun off its Alcon eye care division in 2019 and relinquished its stake in a consumer health business.
| GlaxoSmithKline announced the spin-off of its consumer health business and its independent listing
British pharmaceutical giant GSK has unveiled a detailed plan to spin off its consumer health business as an independent company and go public by mid-2022, while the new GSK will focus on vaccines and specialty drugs, which will be the company's biggest restructuring in 20 years. The division has many well-known brand brands including Panadol, ComfortDa Toothpaste, Baiduobang, Contec and so on. In 2019, GSK officially established a joint venture with Pfizer, GSK Consumer Healthcare, with GSK holding 68% of the shares and Pfizer holding 32% of the shares. In 2020, GSK's consumer health business sold more than £10 billion, accounting for nearly 30% of total annual revenue. Despite this, the business was classified by management as a "non-priority variety" and continued to promote spin-offs.
In recent years, multinational pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, Merck, Novartis, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline, and Roche have spun off their non-core businesses or sold them. "After slimming down", the business pipelines of multinational pharmaceutical companies have become more and more clear, and they have focused more on subdivisions. These multinational drugs have strong capital and sufficient cash flow, but due to multiple dilemmas such as market, price, and public health issues, splitting is also one of the transformation methods of multinational pharmaceutical companies.