M&A slows to a trick­le in 2017, but Big Phar­ma could be on deck for mega deals

Free-flow­ing cash for star­tups, sky-high val­u­a­tions, and un­cer­tain­ty about tax re­form led to un­ex­pect­ed stag­na­tion in M&A this year. But big deals could be on the hori­zon as large phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies get squeezed to de­liv­er top line growth.

Af­ter a lack­lus­ter 2016 (thanks to un­cer­tain­ty in an elec­tion year), many ex­perts in the in­dus­try pre­dict­ed — with Pres­i­dent Trump firm­ly seat­ed in the White House — that we would see an uptick in merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions in 2017. They were wrong. Be­sides Gilead’s near­ly $12 bil­lion move on Kite, 2017 was rather qui­et on the M&A front, ac­cord­ing to a new re­port by Eval­u­atePhar­ma’s EP Van­tage.

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