Pfizer to buy cancer drug company Medivation in $14bn deal

Pfizer will pay about $ 14bn to buy cancer drug developer Medivation in a cash deal aimed at fortifying its hold in one of the hottest and most lucrative areas of medicine.

The New York drugmaker said on Monday that the acquisition would stock its product portfolio with leading treatments for the most common cancers in men and women by adding Medivation’s pricey prostate cancer treatment Xtandi to a lineup that already includes the breast cancer drug Ibrance.

Pfizer’s CEO, Ian Read, called the acquisition a “rare opportunity” to add an established treatment and a pipeline of drugs under development.

Medivation presents an attractive target as a specialty drugmaker focused on developing medicines for cancer and serious diseases with few treatment options. Earlier this year, it rejected a $ 9.3bn offer from the French drugmaker Sanofi.

Pfizer, best known for mass-market drugs such as the impotence pill Viagra and the cholesterol fighter Lipitor, began pursuing cancer drugs well after most industry leaders. It has been furiously playing catch-up, mainly through partnerships with university researchers and other drugmakers.

Last year, Medivation brought in $ 943m in revenue, mainly through Xtandi, which it sells in partnership with the Japanese drugmaker Astellas Pharma.

Xtandi has drawn attention from the public interest group Knowledge Economy International, which has protested at the $ 129,000-a year list price for the treatment. The US government covers much of the cost for Xtandi prescriptions filled under federal health programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration.

Aside from Xtandi, Pfizersaid Medivation also had a promising pipeline of cancer drugs in late-stage clinical development. That includes the potential breast cancer treatment talazoparib and a potential lymphoma drug. Researchers are also studying Xtandi as a possible treatment for earlier-stage prostate cancers.

Pfizer said on Monday that it will pay $ 81.50 per Medivation share. That’s a 21% premium to the San Francisco biotech’s Friday closing price of $ 67.19.

The boards of both companies have approved the deal, which is targeted to close in the third or fourth quarter.

The Pfizer-Medivation deal is much smaller than Pfizer’s proposed $ 160bn combination with Ireland’s Allergan, a plan the drugmakers scrapped after the treasury department issued new rules this spring aimed specially at blocking that deal. It was structured as a tax inversion, which means Pfizer’s headquarters would move, on paper only, from New York to reduce the drugmaker’s US tax bill.

There has been a push from Wall Street for the drugmaker to break itself up into smaller companies so that it can grow faster. While hesitant, Pfizer has promised to decide the issue by the end of this year.

In the meantime, the company has focused on a series of partnerships and deals showing the company can grow as a whole. And company shares have begun to climb after years in the doldrums.

Pfizer to buy cancer drug company Medivation in $14bn deal

Vaccine price lower pledge not ample, critics inform Pfizer

The pharmaceutical company Pfizer has pledged to minimize the value of its new vaccine against a deadly disease by six%, but campaigners say the reduction is nowhere near enough.

Final week Médecins Sans Frontières named for a reduction of the price of the vaccine against pneumococcal ailment to $ five (£3.30) per little one, claiming the two firms manufacturing it had been producing huge revenue.

At a donor conference in Berlin hosted by Angela Merkel to increase funds for the international vaccines alliance Gavi, Pfizer supplied to reduce the price from $ three.30 a dose to $ 3.10. Each youngster needs 3 doses.

The other firm making the vaccine, the British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, mentioned it would freeze the price for ten years for middle-revenue countries that drop Gavi funding because of their escalating wealth.

But MSF mentioned the concessions had been not adequate. “Pfizer’s small price lower for the pneumococcal vaccine is inadequate. We require to see the two Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline get bolder measures to minimize the cost of this vaccine in building countries so that a lot more youngsters can be protected towards pneumonia,” said Kate Elder, vaccines policy adviser for MSF’s entry campaign.

“Considering Pfizer has raked in practically $ 16bn for this vaccine in just 4 many years, we believe the firm can do significantly far more than a meagre six% discount.”

MSF also would like significantly greater transparency from organizations, complaining that they do not reveal the charges of studying, establishing and manufacturing vaccines nor the charges they charge in different countries. The Guardian launched a crowdsourcing exercise asking readers close to the world to aid fill in the gaps by finding out the value of the vaccine in which they dwell.

“Pfizer claims that it is generating the pneumococcal vaccine accessible to the poorest countries at beneath cost value, but we really do not know if that’s accurate,” Elder mentioned. “We require to see the two Pfizer and GSK opening up their books – being transparent for a adjust – on what the genuine costs of the study, development and production of this vaccine are. The secrecy that shrouds the vaccine industry helps make it practically impossible to have an educated discussion on sensible vaccine costs.”

Vaccine price lower pledge not ample, critics inform Pfizer

Pfizer and AstraZeneca CEOs Face United kingdom lawmakers: Day two

“There’s no reality that products of a critical nature would be delayed obtaining to sufferers,” Mr Read through informed the Science and Technologies Committee. “If something, we would accelerate individuals goods.”

Pfizer’s proposed takeover is dealing with skepticism from United kingdom lawmakers concerned by attainable job cuts and the company’s unwillingness to commit to preserving AstraZeneca’s workforce. Pfizer stated it would sustain 20 percent of its worldwide study and development personnel in the United kingdom for 5 years, without having specifying the variety of jobs. Mr Go through stated the merger would end result in work cuts and a reduction in total R&ampD spending.

The mixed firm would be far more effective and much more productive, and displays the changing form of the sector as governments pressure drug firms to minimize expenses, he mentioned.

Pfizer manufactured an preliminary proposal in January that valued AstraZeneca at £46.6 a share, and enhanced the offer you to about £50 a share on May 2, with 32 percent of the payment to be manufactured in stock. The value of that supply has declined to about £48.08, primarily based on yesterday’s closing price tag for Pfizer. Pfizer is crafting a new provide that would boost the value modestly and give a higher proportion in funds, folks with knowledge of the matter explained.

Video: Bloomberg

Pfizer and AstraZeneca CEOs Face United kingdom lawmakers: Day two

Uncovered: Ed Miliband"s Pfizer insider in the shadow Cabinet

At the time Mr Smith boasted that Pfizer had been “extremely supportive” of his aspirations to public workplace. Mr Smith left Pfizer in September 2008 when he joined British biotech company Amgen. He was elected MP for Pontypridd in Could 2010.

Mr Smith is a former producer of the BBC Wales political programme Dragon’s Eye. He has also worked as a particular adviser for Torfaen MP Paul Murphy when he was Welsh Secretary and Northern Ireland Secretary.

Till now Mr Smith – who joined the shadow Cabinet as Welsh spokesman in Might 2012 – has remained publicly silent on the deal.

Mr Smith admitted to the Sunday Telegraph‘s Folks diary that “naturally getting worked there I am almost certainly alittle far more knowing than some of people other members” about Pfizer, but he was talking to him ” as any other member of the shadow Cabinet”.

But he explained he had not been dispensing unique tips and explained Mr Miliband was appropriate to oppose the bid, saying he is in “absolutely the right position on this” and “the national curiosity is becoming served”.

Mr Smith said Mr Miliband was right to oppose the bid, saying he is in “absolutely the proper position on this” and “the national curiosity is currently being served”.

His concern was that Pfizer would discover it less difficult to shut Uk operations that Astra Zeneca. He mentioned: “Brilliant even though Pfizer may possibly be it is an American firm, and American to its finger tips.

“And any foreign owned business – given that the model is predicated on growth and contraction, if difficult instances come the places exactly where they contract really don’t tend to be the bits that are closer to residence.”

Mr Smith stated he was paid £80,000 a year to lobby for Pfizer. And he has not received a penny since he left the firm. “I really do not work for Pfizer. I left Pfizer and I am a Labour MP,” he mentioned.

Nevertheless it is not challenging to imagine Pfizer’s disappointment that its significant cash investment in Mr Smith might have yielded a far better return than this.

Uncovered: Ed Miliband"s Pfizer insider in the shadow Cabinet

AstraZeneca, Pfizer and the public interest | @guardianletters

Vince Cable is appropriate to query whether or not an AstraZeneca/Pfizer merger would be in the national curiosity (Report, 28 April). But while debate has thus far been limited to Britain’s “science base” relating to jobs, wider nationwide considerations are at stake.

British science is without a doubt about personnel undertaking analysis, but also about ethical practice. Whilst evaluating the study ethics approaches of producers is not easy, Pfizer’s record of exploiting epidemics (decried by Médecins Sans Frontières), dead and brain-broken youngsters, and forged certification in clinical trials in west Africa (as reported in the Washington Submit in 2006) is less than enviable. Repeats of this kind of episodes within an Anglo-American venture would harm “brand Britain” and United kingdom scientists’ track record all around the globe.

Closer to residence, the clout of the larger pharmaceutical producers enables them to influence United kingdom regulation policies for security and price-effectiveness – as Professor John Abraham’s and others’ investigation demonstrates. More growth of the world’s biggest drug business would grant Pfizer greater leverage upon policies with regards to the scrutinising of drug safety (MHRA EMA) and value for money (Nice). Patient safety and long term expense-effectiveness of NHS investing would not accordingly be aided by the proposed merger, especially when the politics all around pharmaceuticals is blinkered in direction of jobs.

It hence seems naive of Shapps to advocate this merger in “economic” terms, specifically given the reluctance of Pfizer’s CEO to make promises about Uk-primarily based jobs and the latest historical past of the company’s research and growth policies in east Kent.
Dr Patrick Brown
Assistant professor, Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Investigation, University of Amsterdam

• A basic answer that would defend a essential centre of British study excellence and conserve the taxpayer billions: the NHS must develop a non-revenue pharmaceutical company, supplying direct to the NHS and competing in the world industry. The medication firms would be frightened into cutting their prices, due to the fact this kind of a model would quickly be followed by most European nations. This would defend essential R&ampD excellence as the inherent idealism of scientists in the field would be maximised to be in a position to comply with need to have rather than profit.
Professor Colin Pritchard
College of health and social care, Bournemouth University

• Any scrutiny of the bid by Pfizer for AstraZeneca on grounds of national interest (Report, 6 Could) entails an examination of the tax implications. Mergers encouraged by tax guidelines in the 1960s and 70s were discovered to have been detrimental to corporate efficiency.

Britain is now perceived as a lax tax jurisdiction in contrast to the US. Pfizer could acquire by taking advantage of lower corporation tax prices and the culture of hesitant enforcement of tax guidelines by HMRC by locating its tax affairs in the United kingdom. In the New York Instances (three May), Steven Rattner factors out that about two dozen US companies have modified tax residence through cross-border mergers since 2008.

Gaming of corporate tax guidelines to decrease the burden to Pfizer may possibly not necessarily cost-free a lot more income for R&ampD. In truth the pressure to earn funds by way of merchandise innovation might even be decreased by rising possibility to earn income by the gaming of tax principles, and doing exercises better marketplace energy in negotiations with healthcare suppliers.
SP Chakravarty
Bangor

• On bank holiday Monday Pfizer announced a 15% fall in income in the three months to the end of March compared with the previous yr, to $ 2.3bn (£1.3bn). This was caused by falling revenues (down 9%) from patents expiring. It is even now a worthwhile business, but shareholders will now be hunting urgently for adjustments to cut fees and enhance earnings in the quick term. Actual hazards to Uk jobs – the two analysis staff and in the factories – are evident.

David Cameron’s original enthusiasm for this deal now appears to have been naive. Grant Shapps’s comment that Labour’s proposal to toughen the guidelines was “anti-enterprise, anti-jobs and anti-jobs safety” now sounds foolhardy, placing short-phrase election politics above the UK’s prolonged-phrase interests. The defence industry is topic to in depth investigation prior to government approval for external takeovers of this type. The organization secretary, Vince Cable, can intervene underneath the Enterprise Act. He ought to do so and make sure that the pharmaceutical and other important industries are also protected towards unwelcome takeovers. We are a single of the couple of industrial countries with out this kind of safeguards. Lack of safety endangers the two our economic recovery and United kingdom jobs.

Free of charge trade is fine, but the United kingdom should not become an open industry for foreign companies to purchase our best businesses and patents at knockdown costs. Such prudent action ought to get help across all parties.
Brian Bean
London

• As an investor, I will be bitterly disappointed if Pfizer requires more than AstraZeneca. Annual dividends of around £1.80 nonetheless seem worthwhile, even at the inflated share price near £50 nowadays, although Pfizer’s dollar a share last 12 months seems puny. Even if I had been supplied two Pfizer shares for each and every Astra share, I wouldn’t be interested. And as investment manager Neil Woodford has reportedly stated: “A cashing-out exercise is no use to me – there isn’t an additional AstraZeneca out there.”

City speculators who want a cash payout may welcome the bid, but extended-term investors will not. Of program, we know from the Royal Mail promote-off that government ministers never care about long-phrase traders – their pals in the City want brief-term income. Assume ministers to procrastinate while investors suffer.
Richard Cooper
Chichester, West Sussex

• Given that Thatcher, the Uk has been the global model for liberalisation, taking for granted that all investment opportunities will be open to transnational and foreign traders so completely that it is by no means even pointed out.

The final results can be noticed in the personal sector, where we no longer very own something nationally. In the public sector, the involvement of transnational and foreign companies in privatisations of whichever kind (contracting, promote-offs, PFIs) invokes global treaties that avert reversals of the underpinning privatisations – even when folks want them reversed.

It is time to articulate what liberalisation implies, that it has been a political option and that there are alternatives. The 51% domestic ownership that several other countries enforce would be a single alternative.
Linda Kaucher
London

• The reluctance of Labour to adopt the radical policies primarily based on fairness that, in accordance to the polls, most of the electorate want is apparently partly based mostly on the inevitable alarmist Tory response. This fear, even so, is misguided, because whatever policies are picked, the response is constantly the same. Even when Miliband proposes the eminently wise tightening of the “guidelines to shield crucial British businesses” the Tories consider the predictable “anti-organization, anti-jobs and anti-jobs security” stance (Coalition rift over £63bn provide for Uk medication group, five Could),

Final week Labour’s extremely moderate lease proposals, which concentrated on limiting future increases rather than on reversing current lease hikes, inspecting rented home and taxing profiteering landlords, received comparable treatment method, even stretching to “Venezuelan-style lease controls” from Shapps (Comment is free of charge, 1 Could).

Hopefully the Labour leaders will realise the obvious no matter what the proposal, the Tory response will be hysterical, alarmist, or inaccurate, and perhaps all three. Allow them rant about “red Ed”, “communism” and “written by McCluskey” for all they are worth, because it seems that is all the Tories have they can hardly boast of fairness. Grasp the nettle, Mr Miliband, and let’s have ideas and policies that transform, not tinkering!
Bernie Evans
Liverpool

• It has been said that people who handle the land handle our stomachs. Consequently it is as important for Labour to press for a adjust in the law to create a new public curiosity check to cover not just British market but British land as well (Co-op farms could be sold to China as hopes of neighborhood buyouts die, 5 May).
Geoffrey Keith Naylor
Winchester

• Nils Pratley refers to Pfizer as “seeking rent in a country where it has no roots” (three May possibly). But as a child in the early 60s, I played on fields opposite its Sandwich premises, later on covered by substantial expansion. Older companions assured me that, if you received near to the buildings, you could hear the screams of the monkeys. Despite these formative recollections, I agree with Nils Pratley that Pfizer ought to not be allowed to get away with getting AstraZeneca as a tax dodge. The imposition of significantly increased Uk tax prices on companies in individuals days plainly did not stunt their growth.
Vivienne Spend
Frome

• Cameron says “the determination on any merger is a decision for the two firms and their shareholders”. If the government won’t defend the interests of the British folks, why vote for it?
Emma Tait
London

AstraZeneca, Pfizer and the public interest | @guardianletters

No Longer King Of The North, Pfizer Seems to be To Recapture Crown

Company is war and practically nothing is much more illustrative of that level than a healthful cycle of M&ampA activity.  Amid a wave of healthcare transactions, Pfizer Pfizer, one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies, announced a $ one hundred billion bid for the British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca AstraZeneca.

What if this have been the least negative selection for Pfizer in an increasingly challenging organization atmosphere?  Pfizer, like other big pharmaceutical businesses, is struggling. The blockbuster patent cliff has left the firm with greatly diminished income and has endangered earnings per share. In 2010, Pfizer revenue was much more than $ 65 billion while in 2013 income declined to $ 51.6 billion, a lower of far more than 20% in 3 years.

Rather of tactically obtaining vibrant biotech firms with actually mission-oriented cultures or even innovating through good old-fashioned lab function, Pfizer is trying to turn into the world’s greatest pharmaceutical enterprise by means of a complex financial initiative.

So why is Pfizer performing this?  As a $ 200 billion healthcare business, Pfizer can show its relevance in a way that only a key deal can command. This deal also allows Pfizer to compensate for lost income and merchandise exclusivity by acquiring AstraZeneca’s merchandise lines and investigation abilities. Lastly, as most great CPAs will inform you, keeping away from taxes is the subsequent ideal issue to rising income and this acquisition could considerably reduce the company’s tax liability.

But this wouldn’t be the 1st time Pfizer has executed this sort of financial maneuvering.  If background repeats itself, the following precedents must be noted. On January one, 2010, after acquiring Wyeth for $ 68 billion, Pfizer had 116,500 workers. By the finish of 2013, the firm had 77,700 employees, a reduction of more than 38,000 men and women. Also, in 2013 the organization initiated a $ ten billion stock repurchase prepare. In the course of the exact same time period Pfizer increased its earnings per share from $ one.94 to $ three.19.  The result of this kind of tactics had been quick lived, nevertheless, as Pfizer was weakened by a violent downturn in the economy and the realities of the great patent cliff.

AstraZeneca’s R&ampD Web site in Mölndal, Sweden: primary gate (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By acquiring AstraZeneca, Pfizer could increase its earnings by turning into a British-based mostly corporation with a significantly reduce tax burden than a U.S. firm. Furthermore, for the income portion of any deal, considerably of the income Pfizer would use to acquire AstraZeneca would come from Pfizer’s huge offshore accounts. So Pfizer could obtain a significant asset by making use of money that would have been taxed at a increased fee if they had been ever brought back to the U.S., and Pfizer would conserve substantial taxes on product product sales going forward by getting to be a British-based business and enjoying a significantly reduced tax charge.

All this tends to make ample economic sense for Pfizer, a firm that has lost large amounts of income on its most profitable goods – drugs like Lipitor, Norvasc, Celebrex and Lyrica that now face competition from minimal-value generic brands.  But the proposed acquisition of AstraZeneca would not bolster the combined company’s blockbuster holdings for long. AstraZeneca has and will continue to lose exclusivity of many of its own blockbusters. In 2013, AstraZeneca misplaced exclusivity of Seroquel IR. It will lose exclusivity of Nexium in 2014 and Crestor in 2016. At the exact same time, income of Brilinta/Brilique, which had been anticipated to compensate for losses from other drugs have been disappointing.

As the previous blockbuster cohort declines, there is a new generation of blockbuster medicines, but a lot of have not come from classic huge pharmaceutical businesses. They are now the legacy of the big gamers in biotechnology like Amgen Amgen, Celgene Celgene and Gilead Sciences Gilead Sciences. The irony is that these had been all tiny biotechnology organizations not also long ago. That they are market common-bearers these days demonstrates that mission-oriented R&ampD organizations driven by dynamic cultures can make scientific breakthroughs and accomplish development.

For now the stakes are higher for all the gamers in the healthcare kingdom as an “acquire or be acquired” frenzy reigns.  After this round of mergers and acquisitions comes to an finish, which invariably it have to, it is very likely big pharma will return to business as normal, even though the subsequent logical move ought to be to obtain greater biotechnology organizations ahead of the biotechs grow to be the rulers of the land.

No Longer King Of The North, Pfizer Seems to be To Recapture Crown

Pfizer Commences Testing For Over-The-Counter Lipitor

Hunting backward to improve its long term, Pfizer will as soon as yet again consider to gain FDA approval to market its blockbuster drug, atorvastatin (Lipitor), over-the-counter (OTC). Peter Loftus reviews in the Wall Street Journal that the company has commenced a clinical research to assistance the application for minimal-dose atorvastatin (10 mg).

Over-the-counter statins have been unsuccessfully proposed in the past. Merck attempted many occasions to gain approval for lovastatin (Mevacor). In 2007 an FDA advisory panel recommended against approval. And in 2011, prior to the expiration of Pfizer’s patent on Lipitor, the firm explained that it would pursue OTC approval.

The new examine, which has been registered on ClinicalTrials.Gov, will enroll 1200 folks at pharmacies in the US. The main outcome of the research will be to establish the percentage of individuals who comply with instructions on the box to verify their LDL levels and who consider suitable actions based on the test end result. “It’s our responsibility to show individuals can securely and efficiently use these goods,” a Pfizer executive told the WSJ.

But the examine may supply an response to a query that is no longer being asked. New lipid tips launched last 12 months are primarily based on an overall assessment of chance and do not hinge on lipid measurements. The report estimates guideline co-author Neil Stone: “The new recommendations insist on a patient-clinician discussion before a statin prescription is written.”

But, Loftus writes, “other medical doctors say the elimination of distinct cholesterol targets could make it easier for individuals to consider an OTC statin. Once individuals know they are in a chance group identified by the new guidelines—for which the lower-dose level in in excess of-the-counter Lipitor is appropriate—they could get the product off the shelf and not fret about treating to a particular target.”

The WSJ reports that after peaking at virtually $ 13 billion in 2006, Lipitor sales for Pfizer final yr had been $ two.three billion. An OTC model could bring in an addition $ one billion in sales every single 12 months, Goldman Sachs estimates.

Pfizer Commences Testing For Over-The-Counter Lipitor