So far, there have been 484 deals in 2019, up from 365 in 2018. That’s higher than any year since 1995, when Dealogic, a financial markets platform, began tracking deals.
In 2018, companies spent $97 billion on M&A. The previous record was $215 billion in 2016.
Boosting this year’s numbers is a trend of large, legacy drugmakers buying drugs from other companies rather than developing drugs themselves, according to MarketWatch. For example, in August Amgen bought Celegene’s drug, Otezla, a psoriasis treatment, for $13.4 billion.
Deals in which drugmakers purchased a drug from another company have totaled $56 billion so far in 2019, compared to the previous five-year average of $46 billion.
This year also has seen several megamergers, such as AbbVie acquiring Allergan and Bristol-Myers Squibb acquiring Celgene.
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