Pharmaceutical M&A deals in 2017

In 2017, deal volume in the healthcare sector overall was very active as far as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) were concerned. However, in the biotech and pharma space it was at the lowest levels in many years and a fraction of that of the boom years of 2014 and 2015.

The actual number of pharma/biotech M&A transaction announcement tracked by The Pharma Letter for full-year 2017 was just 101, compared with 130 in 2016 and 166 in 2015, which was a record year.

Moreover, in value terms, nothing has ever come close to the 1999 acquisition of Warner Lambert by Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), worth a massive $111.8 billion, but which, adjusted for inflation, would have been a staggering $160 billion.