Oxford, UK January 23, 2009 – If Pfizer and Wyeth merge to create a $60 billion company, will it be a good deal or a bad deal? Fintan Walton, PhD, CEO of PharmaVentures, says, ‘This is potentially a bad deal for both companies. By 2012, the merged company will have lost $25bn with products coming off-patent with the current pipeline only replenishing $2.5bn in that time’.
Dr Walton continues, ‘It will be a major distraction to the merged entity and will mean that the merged company will potentially lose the opportunity to buy up biotechnology companies and their pipelines – leaving their competitors to do so. So, post merger, the rich pickings would have gone elsewhere’.
On the positive side, any potential merger would allow Pfizer to gain access to new therapies, for instance to vaccines, and to share in the remaining years of Enbrel, which is co-marketed with Amgen. Pfizer have complementary Central Nervous System (CNS) portfolios, and so the combined company will have a strong CNS presence. Dr Walton says, ‘As a combined company, there would be 20 products in Phase III, which sounds impressive, but they will need to rationalise to make the business work’.
PharmaDeals Review will be reporting on any potential monopoly issues, although the PharmaVentures’ business analysts say there is no obvious bar to any merger going ahead.