Biotech M&A is rip­ping along now as IPOs surge and ven­ture cash flows. Who's the next big tar­get?

Over the course of the first three days of this week we’ve been treat­ed to two biotech buy­outs to­tal­ing $9.6 bil­lion — by it­self more than all the buy­out cash Eval­u­atePhar­ma ac­count­ed for dur­ing all of Q2 last year. And af­ter Q1 racked up close to $47 bil­lion in M&A work, there’s plen­ty of an­tic­i­pa­tion that more deals lie ahead in what could be a very busy 2018.

At the top of the to-buy list right now is Shire $SH­PG, which Take­da put in­to play with its move to flag a like­ly up­com­ing of­fer. That would be worth more than $50 bil­lion by it­self. Take­da’s in­ter­est came out of left field, but the com­pa­ny has been re­struc­tur­ing for the past two years, shed­ding R&D jobs and reeval­u­at­ing the pipeline.

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