As have occurred frequently in the past decades, massive industry consolidation in the drug industry is preparing to take shape. Responding to lower acquisition costs (stock prices of companies are lower) and the need to continue revenue growth, industry leaders in bio-technology and drugs are buying out their competition.
Roche (market cap: 242 billion dollars), a large Swiss drug-maker, issued a hostile bid for Genentech (market cap: 85 billion dollars), a large American competitor around when Pfizer (market cap: 100 billion dollars), a large American pharmaceutical company that’s been funding revenue growth with continuous acquisitions, agreed to acquire Wyeth for 68 billion dollars. At a time when Citigroup is 19 billion and Intel is 71 billion, the figures above are very significant: These are mega-mergers.
With the huge amounts of cash spent and debt issued to finance these acquisitions, these companies won’t have the money or credit to develop new drugs (as much as they otherwise would have), and with decreased competition between the companies drug prices will continue to soar.
So why hasn’t the FTC investigated whether this is a violation of anti-trust regulations?