Pfizer to make merger bid for Wyeth
pharmafile | January 26, 2009 | News story | Sales and Marketing | MA, Pfizer
Pfizer looks set to make a multi-billion dollar takeover of fellow US pharma company Wyeth.
The world's largest pharma company, Pfizer is facing a steep drop in revenues when its flagship brand Lipitor goes off patent in 2011, and the move for Wyeth will help it to compensate for this loss of earnings.
Pfizer is said to be ready to make a bid worth $67 billion for Wyeth, and The Financial Times reports that a deal could be announced as early as Monday.
Wyeth is not without its own patent expiry worries, however.
The company's ulcer treatment Protonix lost US patent protection last year, and its biggest selling drug, antidepressant Efexor, faces the same fate in 2010. The drug earned Wyeth around $4 billion in 2008 and has already lost patent protection in the UK and other European markets.
Both companies have a handful of promising and fast-growing newer brands – Pfizer's cancer treatment Sutent and Wyeth's vaccine Prevnar, for example – but neither have products which can seamlessly replace either Lipitor or Efexor.
Among the companies' most notable drugs in phase III are Wyeth's Alzheimer's disease candidate bapineuzumab and Pfizer's apixaban, an anti-blood clotting product.
The deal will be most attractive from the perspective of cost savings, as a merged company could cut billions from its cost base in sales and marketing, R&D and other functions.
Wyeth has been conducting its own takeover talks with Dutch vaccines firm Crucell in recent weeks, with the aim of increasing its presence within this growing field.
There are conflicting reports about whether or not this deal will go ahead, but Wyeth's strength in vaccines is undoubtedly one of its attractions to Pfizer.
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