Merger Aftermath: Pfizer Refocuses
While I never was involved in a corporate acquisition or merger, I have many friends who have lived through them and based on their experiences it is a never a “pretty sight.” Merger aftermaths usually feature massive layoffs, executive management disputes and turf wars and corporate culture clashes tha occur when two workforces are forced to merge as one. However, sometimes mergers may be a good thing for struggling companies. To that end, Pfizer may actually benefit from it $68 billion acquisition of Wyeth late last year.
The acquisition will cost at least 20,000 employees their jobs—not a good thing in a national economy where unemployment is well over 10 percent (despite claims to the contrary). However, this merger is strikingly different than Pfizer’s questionable past mergers and acquisitions which were primarily engineered to procure one or two drugs that had blockbuster potential e.g. Lipitor and Celebrex. This time around, Pfizer’s management team is actually re-evaluating its entire drug development portfolio and attempting to expand the company’s pipeline to include vaccines, therapeutic proteins and other biologics. As I previously noted, most major pharmaceutical companies believe that biologics will be the major driver of pharmaceutical markets in the not so distant future.
According to a post on PharmaLive, Pfizer announced that it will discontinue research and development on roughly 100 experimental new drug candidates. Pfizer officials revealed that the company will continue with 500 research projects in six areas of: 1) Alzheimer’s disease, 2) diabetes, 3) pain, 4) cancer and 5) mental illness (including schizophrenia).
Of the 500 projects, 30 drugs are being tested for cancer indications, 10 for Alzheimer’s disease, eight for pain and 11 for inflammation. Further,133 are in various stages of human clinical testing, including several that are awaiting regulatory approval in the US and elsewhere.
On the biologics front, Pfizer has six vaccines and 27 biopharmaceutical drugs in development. Prior to the Wyeth acquisition, the company only had one vaccine and 16 new biologics that it was testing. Like most other pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer wants to be a major player in the biopharmaceutical and biologics markets by 2015.
Only time will tell!
Until next time,
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!
