Deals
A new report from Pitchbook suggests we’re in for a period of more sustainable investing, with VC firms continuing to create and invest in companies, just more carefully.
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M&A didn’t return as hoped for in 2024. The biopharma industry is heading into the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference next week in a grim mood.
By far, the largest acquisition of 2024 was Novo Holdings’ yet-to-be-closed buyout of manufacturer Catalent at $16.5 billion. Outside of that, the leading pharmaceutical companies kept to less than $5 billion per deal.
Novo Holdings’ acquisition of Catalent has ignited concerns from industry stakeholders, who fear that the consolidation could limit competition, but there is also the possibility that the deal could represent an opportunity for smaller-scale CDMOs to find new partners.
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The J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference started off with a flurry of deals that reinvigorated excitement across the biopharma industry. Johnson & Johnson moved to acquire Intra-Cellular Therapies for $14.6 billion, breaking a dealmaking barrier that kept Big Pharma’s 2024 biotech buyouts to under $5 billion.
Donald Trump continues to make waves in biopharma; Sage rejects Biogen’s unsolicited takeover offer; the obesity space sees more action with new company launches, IPOs and fresh data; and experts get ready for an important era in the Duchenne muscular dystrophy space.
Following a lawsuit filed last week, Sage has officially rejected Biogen’s unsolicited buyout offer, which valued the embattled biotech at just $469 million.
Protein degradation–focused Neomorph nabs its third Big Pharma deal of around $1.5 billion in less than a year.
The deal follows a $1.06 billion U.S. contract in July 2024 and a $1.24 billion agreement with an Asia-based pharma a few months later.
On the company’s Q4 earnings call where an eyepopping $88.8 billion in full-year sales were revealed, leaders shifted focus away from enormous takeovers to single-digit billion buy outs.
With an eye toward advancing a novel antibody-drug conjugate for gastrointestinal cancers, ArriVent is the latest biopharma player to ink a deal with a Chinese biotech.
Five years ago, Gilead signed a massive deal with Galapagos. After a restructuring, the pharma is still hunting for the potential it saw at the original signing.
Biopharma executives shared their thoughts on the potential impacts of the new administration; Annalee Armstrong recaps JPM and her talks with Biogen, Gilead, Novavax and more; Wegovy’s higher dose induces more weight loss; AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo’s Dato-DXd scores its first FDA approval.
Biopharma executives make their predictions for the year ahead, from a bold forecast for the return of the megadeal to a plea for the slow, healthy recovery of the industry at large.