SAN FRANCISCO – Deal making is continuing its breakneck pace in the life sciences sector with a combined total of almost $50 billion generated from 587 transactions in the first quarter of the year, according to data released last week by Thomson Reuters Recap at the Allicense 2014 meeting.
SAN FRANCISCO – Deal of the Year winners were announced in the partnering and M&A categories at the Thomson Reuters Allicense 2014 meeting here on Tuesday evening. From a short list of five deals industry selected the partnership involving Biogen Idec Inc. and Isis Pharmaceuticals Inc. whose goal is to apply antisense technology to the discovery and development of therapies for neurological diseases.
We know that throughout the course of the development of the biotechnology industry history has indeed had a habit of repeating itself. Exactly five years ago the industry was digesting the news that New York-based Pfizer Inc. was shelling out a massive $68 billion to acquire Wyeth – a deal that represented at the time one of the largest big pharma-big pharma transactions in almost a decade.
The first quarter earnings season kicked off last week with investors looking for strong financial results from the leading companies to stabilize the uncertainty that has surrounded the biotech sector these past few weeks.
Given the mass of resources and huge investments already made in research and development we have only just begun to make a dent in easing the mortality burden resulting from various cancers.
It will come as no surprise that the Street's passion for biotech initial public offerings (IPO) has waned lately in the wake of the sector's overall poor market performance during the past few weeks.
One might think that with the current white hot biopharma initial public offering (IPO) market – which has prevailed during the early months of 2014 – private company boards and senior management have been spending all their time mulling over whether they should follow in the footsteps of the 28 firms that already made this successful leap, collectively raising $2.2 billion in the process.
Notwithstanding market nervousness toward the end of the first quarter of 2014, the period was characterized by a tsunami of cash flooding into biotech coffers. Both global public and private companies benefited. As a result, the sector collectively raised $9.5 billion – almost double the amount raised in the same period last year according to data from BioWorld Snapshots.
Although it’s taken more than two years, biotech pessimists finally got to utter the phrase, “I told you so!” Yes, it finally arrived – a slip in the sector’s meteoric rise that saw, late in the first quarter, a drop in its collective valuation of around 12 percent. Not much in the scheme of things when you consider that the BioWorld Blue Chip Biotech Index, a price-weighted index that includes 19 of the top biotechnology companies as rated by market cap, remains up 86 percent since the beginning of 2013. Nevertheless, biotech’s fall was enough to sharpen the pins of...
Notwithstanding market nervousness toward the end the first quarter of 2014 the period was characterized by a tsunami of cash flooding into biotech coffers. Both global public and private companies benefited. As a result, the sector collectively raised $9.5 billion – almost double the amount raised in the same period last year according to data from BioWorld Snapshots.
