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.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER