ABSTRACT
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have at times obsessed the pharmaceutical industry. In 2012 Price water house Coopers found that only 7 per cent of pharmaceutical and life science CEOs considered that mergers and acquisitions would be the main opportunity to grow their business over the subsequent 12 months. The CEO of Glaxo Smith Kline, Sir Andrew Witty, also believes that large scale and R&D productivity do not go together. The jury has long been out on the impact on R&D productivity of the merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham in 2000. Saving manufacturing costs is a rationale of relatively modest importance in pharmaceuticals. The Pfizer corporate acquisition that most dramatically paid off was of Warner-Lambert in 2000. The main practical problem militating against demergers as the unlikelihood that a demerged or spun-off entity would for very long remain independent.
