Q2 deal ac­tiv­i­ty points to po­ten­tial 'bumper year' for phar­ma — re­port

High-dol­lar deals in the sec­ond quar­ter and hun­gry phar­mas look­ing to fill gaps in their pipelines are “rais­ing hopes for a bumper year,” Eval­u­ate Van­tage said in its deal­mak­ing re­port re­leased dur­ing the 2023 BIO con­fer­ence.

How­ev­er, the “FTC bar­ing its teeth in an ex­pand­ed re­mit may squash them en­tire­ly,” the re­port states.

M&A is off to a strong start fol­low­ing a year of falling stock prices and tough de­ci­sions as com­pa­nies sought to con­serve cap­i­tal. In­vest­ment-bank­ing firm Tor­reya called it a “blis­ter­ing pace,” with high­lights in­clud­ing Pfiz­er’s $43 bil­lion Seagen deal, Mer­ck’s $10.8 bil­lion Prometheus deal, and GSK’s $2 bil­lion Bel­lus Health deal. De­spite what it called “lack­lus­ter” ac­tiv­i­ty in 2022, PwC pre­dict­ed at the end of last year that deal­mak­ing in 2023 will “more close­ly re­sem­ble pri­or years with a to­tal deal val­ue in the $225 bil­lion to $275 bil­lion range across all sub­sec­tors.”

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