The pharmaceutical industry is one of the major sectors that is actively involved in huge mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals, both in terms of the number of deals and the amount of money spent. Most companies in the sector, especially the big pharma consider pharma M&A as a major factor to bolster innovation and overall growth. Recent research by our pharma industry experts shows that revenues coming from innovations sourced outside of Big Pharma is currently stand at over 45%. Over the years, several large, game-changing deals have continuously and profoundly changed the competitive landscape of the sector, while smaller yet significant transactions remain an integral part of pharma industry operations.
Why Pharma M&A is a driver of strategic repositioning?
Pharma M&A has become a common practice for companies that have non-diverse pipelines or have top revenue drugs that are nearing patent expiration and subsequent generic erosion. According to industry experts at Infiniti Research, some of the key reasons why companies favor pharma M&A include:
- The critical size requirements across various market segments have increased exponentially over the years. At this rate, it becomes nearly impossible for a single company for companies to survive on their own. This made strategic pharma M&A a necessity for most companies
- Large mergers in the pharma industry allow bundling of sub-critical businesses, and thereby change the culture and to build new platforms
- Another motivation for pharma M&A is to capture annual cost synergies by scaling up
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Consideration for successful M&A
Achieving Successful Integration Post Pharma M&A
Approximately only 60% of pharma merger deals succeed in the long run. A successful merger is one wherein the resulting company achieves the strategic intentions driving the merger when the deal was initially formed. Mergers that fail often show traits including focusing more attention on back-office integration, cost control, and systems consolidation.
Creating business synergies
Revenue increases during pharma M&A can often be more difficult to achieve and take longer than expected. During pharma mergers and acquisitions teams must develop strategies such as the degree to which the existing portfolios need to be rationalized, how teams can be used to increase efficiency, how salesforce can be consolidated to remove overlap, and how the projects of each of the brands can be enhanced.
Defining the integration strategy
The successful integration of two companies largely depends on having a consistent approach with strategic intent. Guiding principles, priorities, and governance must reflect the logic behind the merger. A reliable integration strategy must be efficient in articulating both financial and nonfinancial goals, as well as risk-mitigation strategies.
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