The Top 10 Largest Pharmaceutical Mergers in History
The largest takeover in pharmaceutical history to date was also made by the US company Pfizer. The New York-based pharmaceutical giant spent 106.1 billion dollar on the takeover of its US competitor Warner-Lambert. Pfizer thus preceded the takeover of Warner-Lambert by the US pharmaceutical company American Home Products (later renamed Wyeth) at the last second. Negotiations between the two companies were in their final stages and an agreement had already been reached on a purchase price of 84.9 billion dollar. Pfizer then decided to make a 106.1 billion euro offer for Warner-Lambert, which was finally approved by the board. Pfizer and Warner Lambert had already been cooperating in a joint venture since 1996. However, Pfizer saw the friendly takeover bid from American Home Products to Warner Lambert as a threat to this cooperation and reacted with a hostile takeover bid. American Home Products received the record sum of 2.1 billion dollar as compensation for the bursting of the already agreed merger. At the time, the Pfizer/Warner-Lambert deal was the fourth largest takeover in history. Only Vodafone/Mannesmann, AOL/Time-Warner and MCI Worldcom/Sprint cost more money. According to a publication by management consultants Ernst & Young, Pfizer is the largest pharmaceutical company in the world in terms of pure pharmaceutical sales, followed by Roche and Merck.
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