Berkshire Hathaway, a company owned by Warren Buffet, has announced this week that is all set to acquire Lubrizol for $9 billion in cash. Lubrizol is a specialty chemical company, and industry analysts are of the opinion that Buffet is buying the specialty chemical company to boost the earnings power of Berkshire Hathaway.
Fast Company has surveyed the biotech world and come up with its list of the Top 10 companies in the industry. Amyris makes the list for its work combating the malaria parasite, while Galapagos and Fate Therapeutics get nods for pipeline innovation.
Continue reading ‘Fast Company Highlights 10 Top Innovators in Biotech’
Medco Health Solutions Inc’s (MHS.N) quarterly profit rose 11 percent on increased mail deliveries of generic drugs, but its shares fell as the report failed to excite investors. The U.S. pharmacy benefit manager reported a fourth-quarter profit, excluding special items, that matched Wall Street’s target and it backed its 2011 forecast. Its shares fell 4.5 percent.
Continue reading ‘Medco in-line Profit Report Fails to Excite Market’
Two U.S. senators have revived the reimportation debate with a new bill co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of their fellows. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) is teaming up with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) on the proposal, which would allow U.S. pharmacies and drug wholesalers to source products from other countries with “tough safety standards.”
Continue reading ‘Senators Resurrect Reimportation with New Bill’
Fierce Medical Device’s first annual look at the top 10 VC deals of the year. Venture capital investment in the medical device industry fell 9 percent in 2010, ending the year as the fourth largest investment sector with $2.3 billion going into 324 deals. That’s up slightly over 2009, when medical devices ranked third among all industries.
Continue reading ‘Top 10 Medical Device Venture Capital Deals of 2010′
Although President Obama’s proposed $3.73 trillion budget for 2012 calls for more than $1 trillion in slashed spending, it protects doctors from steep cuts in their Medicare payments with a two year reprieve. The budget delays a scheduled 25 percent cut in the Sustainable Growth Rate, Medicare’s physician payment formula that was slated to go into effect in 2012, The Hill blog reports.
Continue reading ‘Obama’s Budget Delays Deep Cuts to Physician Payments’
Every so often, someone sets up a dartboard of likely targets for Big Pharma buyouts. This time, the target-setter is Barron’s, and the focus is on companies with market values of $10 billion or less. Most of them have at least one marketed product: “It’s less dangerous playing smaller outfits with approved drugs than those with treatments still awaiting an okay from an increasingly demanding FDA,” the magazine points out.
Continue reading ‘Which Specialty Drugmakers Should Big Pharma Buy?’
More drugmakers are seeing potential in the business of producing copycat versions of expensive biotechnology drugs as U.S. guidelines take shape. The topic was at the forefront of plans discussed by several executives at this week’s JP Morgan healthcare conference in San Francisco. Kevin Sharer, chief executive officer at Amgen Inc, said the world’s largest maker of branded biotechnology drugs would consider entering the “biosimilars” space, particularly in emerging markets like Asia and South America.
Continue reading ‘Copying Biotech Medicine Attracts More Drugmakers’
A new cigarette tax and a stop-smoking drug were a match made in Japan, and it might have been heaven if Pfizer ($PFE) hadn’t fumbled. The drugmaker, which sells its Chantix remedy as Champix in Japan, knew the higher tax was coming, advertised its drug heavily, and then failed to make enough to satisfy demand.
A unit of Footstar Corp., a holding company, has agreed to acquire CPEX Pharmaceuticals for $76.6 million in cash. The bid is worth $27.25 a share–more than twice what it was a year ago as back-to-back quarterly profits helped fuel investor interest. CPEX focuses on what it calls a “drug delivery platform technology.” Platform, of course, is a key word that implies it’s not just a one-shot deal, but a model for a whole family of drug-delivery applications. This likely made CPEX more attractive.
Continue reading ‘Footstar to acquire CPEX’s Drug-Delivery Technology’
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