After watching months of pharma’s M&A wave from the sidelines, Teva finally made a splash this summer with an agreement to pick up Allergan’s generics business. And it may not be finished in the dealmaking arena.
As CEO Erez Vigodman told listeners during a Monday session at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, down the line, Teva could “entertain a much larger transaction on the specialty front.”
“I don’t want to rule out the possibility that we might pursue larger deals going forward if the right ones show themselves,” he said.
Don’t expect it to happen any time in the near future, though. If 2014 was for getting the company’s “house in order” and 2015 was for transformation with the Allergan deal, than 2016 will be about assimilation and integration, Vigodman said. 2017 is the earliest he could see the company shifting gears and moving to “the next phase to the grand story of Teva”–and there is a next phase in that story, he assured investors.
For now, Teva is in the middle of preintegration planning with Allergan’s generics team, which will come over after the companies close the $40.5 billion transaction they struck in July. The company has internally announced the top three layers of generics leadership, and it’s “working very closely” with the FTC to identify what products it’ll need to divest for antitrust reasons, generics CEO Siggi Olafsson said Monday.
Meanwhile, the Israeli pharma is negotiating with up to 5 potential buyers for those products, so it will “have the opportunity of moving quickly” when it gets word from the FTC, he said. Analysts have said one-time target Mylan could benefit from Teva’s castoffs as it jettisons assets that could be worth up to $1 billion.
By Carly Helfand
Source: Fierce Pharma
Giovanni Caforio, the former CEO of Bristol Myers Squibb, is set to become the next board chairman of Novartis, which on Tuesday proposed the pharmaceutical industry veteran as its pick to replace Joerg Reinhardt in the role next year. Reinhardt has served as Novartis’ chair since 2013 and plans to retire when his 12-year term ends in 2025.
GE HealthCare has raised the curtain on two ultrasound systems equipped with artificial intelligence programs designed to assist in diagnosing conditions in women’s health, including obstetric exams. The Voluson Signature 20 and 18 imaging systems include AI tools capable of automatically identifying and annotating measurements of fetal anatomy.
Scientists from the University of Edinburgh’s School of Chemistry have revealed a new sustainable method of manufacturing complex molecules that could reduce waste produced during drug production. The method published in Nature Chemistry could help to prevent severe side effects caused by drugs that can exist as enantiomers.
