QDIS Blog

Seems Barr labs will be successful in its bid to takeover Croatian Pliva for a whooping $2.5 billion US dollars.

Barr Secures Takeover of Pliva: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

The deal should be completed by the end of October. It will be interesting to see if this pays of for Barr. I normally am not a supporter of the “bigger is better” mentality but I wouldn’t bet against Barr’s management on this one.

Other News Stories

• Yahoo! News Search Results for Barr Pliva
• Barr Pliva - Google News

Technorati Tags: Barr Labs, pharma M&A, pharmaceutical deals, Pliva

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The FDA has recently approved additional flu vaccines for the upcoming season. This is good news in light of past problems in this area.

FDA Approves Additional Vaccine for Upcoming Influenza Season

The new vaccine is called FluLaval made by ID Biomedical (a subsidiary of GlaxoSmithKline biologics) and distributed by GlaxoSmithKline and was approved under the accelerated approval pathway. I fin it encouraging that the FDA recognizes problems with the supply in the past and is taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen in the future.

This brings the total number of flu vaccines averrable in the US to five. Another vaccine, Fluarix was approved last year and is also made by GlaxoSmithKline.

Other Resources

• Yahoo! News Search Results for FluLaval
• FluLaval - Google Search

Technorati Tags: flu, FluLaval, GlaxoSmithKline, Fluarix, vaccine

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The pharmaceutical merger mania has now spread to Australia. It is reported that Sigma Pharmaceuticals will acquire Australian Pharmaceutical Industries for $422 US dollars.

Sigma Pharmaceuticals makes offer for rival - Marketplace by Bloomberg - International Herald Tribune:

I do find it interesting that the merger mania has expanded beyond what I considered to be the bounds; namely the US and Europe. I’m not up on the Australian pharmaceutical industry but this seems like it follows the lines of business development for Sigma since they merged with Arrow Pharmaceuticals Limited back in Dec 2005.

Other Resources

• Sigma Pharmaceuticals Limited Proposal to Australian Pharmaceutical Industries (pdf)
• Sigma proposes merger with API | Business | The Australian

Technorati Tags: pharma M&A, pharmaceutical deals, Sigma Pharmaceuticals

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