Thursday, May 22, 2014

A drug deal goes bad

"CREATING the world's largest drug company was never going to be easy. But Pfizer probably didn't expect it would be this hard. After months of speculation, mounting opposition and multiple offers, the American pharmaceutical giant looks set to give up its attempt to take over AstraZeneca, Britain's second largest drugmaker, which would have created the biggest drug company in the world."

Few weeks ago we discussed the advantages of Pfizer shifting its major location from US to Europe. Pfizer attempt to take over AstraZeneca has failed and it cannot make another bid for the next 6 months from now. 

Personally, I don't support monopoly in most of the cases but there are few people out there who believe creating large monopoly in the medical field is beneficial. Creating such large monopoly is killing the innovation and furthermore, shifting the location from US to Europe will destroy lots of R&D jobs in US. Do you think the regulators should act against it when Pfizer comes back again with a bid after 6 months?

Here is the link to the article. 

4 comments:

  1. I agree with you Utsav, and I was glad to see the deal fail. I don't think that monopolies do much to help the market in this case--a great deal of the innovation in recent years has come from somewhat smaller firms (take for example AIDS/HIV medication). Competition is essential to push drug companies to innovate more, especially as patents start to expire

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  2. I haven't done much research on the drug industry but based on what I know, a monopoly would not be beneficial to the customers of the industry. What we need is more competition. Many of the recent innovations in drugs have come from small drug companies (correct me if I'm wrong), not the big and bloated one. So, I agree with everything Rasheed said.

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  3. The potential job losses are not good for us. Furthermore, these companies have a grand portion of market share. I am happy this deal did not go through also.

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  4. Yes, I also agree that a monopoly in this case does not benefit the consumers and competition is highly needed in this kind of market. Good that the deal fail, but I guess they will try again after the 6 months are over and probably have a better case...

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