Amgen open to larger M&A deals, says CFO
pharmafile | March 8, 2016 | News story | Sales and Marketing | Amgen, mergers and acquisitions
Amgen’s chief financial officer has indicated that the company is ready to consider doing larger deals to buy other companies, following a relatively quiet 2015.
In an interview with Bloomberg, David Meline echoed comments last November from chief executive Bob Bradway, who said the company was open to “potentially larger things”, signalling a shift away from a focus on smaller companies with candidates in early-stage development, towards ones in the $10 billion range in buyout terms.
“We’re saying you shouldn’t be surprised if we do” a bigger transaction, Meline told Bloomberg. While no specific targets were mentioned, it is clear that Amgen is ready to again splash the considerable cash on its books, having spent the majority of 2015 restructuring, following its $10 billion purchase of cancer specialist Onyx.
But although saying the company is feeling “more energetic about being out there”, Meline cautioned Amgen against rushing into paying out for the wrong firms. He said Amgen passed on deals in the latter half of 2015 that were not an ideal fit for its therapeutic priorities, saying “the hardest thing to do when you have money in the bank is to be disciplined.” Amgen has some $30 billion in cash and equivalents at this time.
David Meline
2015 was a record year for merger and activity in the pharmaceutical sector, topped by Pfizer’s $160 billion purchase of Botox-maker Allergan – the latter of which also sold its generics unit to Teva for $40.5 billion. Other big-money acquisitions included AbbVie’s $21 billion buyout of biotech firm Pharmacyclics in March.
While the pace of such deals has yet to pick up significantly in 2016, Shire did finally conclude its long-running play for rare disease specialist Baxalta in January, at a cost of $32 billion.
Joel Levy
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