AstraZeneca’s board scrapped merger talks with Bristol Myers Squibb on Aug. 3, days after reports emerged that the companies were discussing a roughly $400 billion tie-up, according to an Aug. 11 report from the Financial Times.
The two companies had been in serious talks throughout the spring and summer and were nearing agreement on price, with an announcement targeted for mid-August, according to the report.
However, AstraZeneca shares fell 9% on Aug. 3, the stock’s worst trading day since the early months of the pandemic, after the Financial Times’ initial report on the talks. Investors pushed back on the idea of AstraZeneca, seen as having a strong pipeline, absorbing Bristol Myers Squibb’s patent cliff, with nearly half of the company’s revenue exposed to expirations as soon as 2028.
A completed deal would have surpassed AstraZeneca’s $39 billion purchase of Alexion Pharmaceuticals as the company’s largest acquisition, and would have marked a return to blockbuster pharma consolidation not seen since Bristol Myers Squibb’s own $74 billion purchase of Celgene in 2019, a deal that drew similar investor pushback and has yet to deliver the returns some shareholders expected.
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