The $100 bil­lion club gets a shake­up, dri­ven by biotech’s new blue-chip names

The drug in­dus­try of­fi­cial­ly has two new heavy­weights.

For the first time, Re­gen­eron and Ver­tex have crossed the $100 bil­lion mar­ket cap thresh­old. They join about 15 oth­er drug­mak­ers that count as the in­dus­try’s biggest, and in­clude oth­er gi­ants like John­son & John­son, Mer­ck, and No­var­tis.

And while it’s an ar­bi­trary line, it’s al­so a sig­nal of how the in­dus­try is evolv­ing — both com­pa­nies are biotechs that have spent years build­ing their R&D iden­ti­ties with a sharp­er sci­en­tif­ic fo­cus and far less deal­mak­ing than typ­i­cal­ly seen in phar­ma board­rooms. It’s a sign that new ap­proach­es to M&A, R&D and lead­er­ship strate­gies are shap­ing the fu­ture of phar­ma, and how the newest gi­ants have been built dif­fer­ent­ly.

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