June 07, 2020
11:36
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A merger of the two giants would be the largest pharmaceutical deal in history.
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AstraZeneca
has rival Gilead Sciences
, known in our country as a partner and core shareholder of Galapagos since last year, approached for a merger. Bloomberg writes this on Sunday, stating that there are currently ‘no formal conversations’ taking place.
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At current stock prices, the American Gilead is worth almost 100 billion dollars (87 billion euros), the British-Swedish AstraZeneca is valued at 111 billion British pounds (125 billion euros). At Gilead, no one was available for comment, an AstraZeneca spokesman confined to the classic “never comment on rumors.”
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Both companies managed to profile themselves during the Covid-19 crisis, resulting in a sharp rise in the share price. Gilead with remdesivir, a virus inhibitor that looks promising in early research in the treatment of Covid-19 patients. And AstraZeneca is working with the University of Oxford on a potential corona vaccine.
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Although Gilead’s stock price rose nearly a fifth this year due to investor optimism around brake desivir, the California group is still vulnerable. The share price is still lower than in 2015, due to the sharp shrinking turnover from the star products: hepatitis C drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni.
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Galapagos
To half-blame that downturn, Gilead opened the portfolio sharply last year for a mega deal with Galapagos. € 3.5 billion for access to Galapagos’ golden beetle filgotinib, a rheumatic drug that started modestly in Moldova a decade earlier, and € 1 billion for a minority share in the capital of the people of Mechelen.
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AstraZeneca itself had to ward off unwanted attention from the American giant Pfizer in 2014. The deal eventually fell through due to major political opposition. In the United Kingdom itself, but also in the United States, where then-President Obama saw no mercy in Pfizer’s attempt to flag out to the United Kingdom for tax purposes.
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The British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant now seems to want to take advantage of the fact that its stock price, thanks to the potential corona vaccine and promising research data for the experimental lung cancer drug Tagrisso, is close to a record level. AstraZeneca recently surpassed major rival and fellow countryman Glaxo SmithKine in market value.
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