Playing the High-Stakes Pharma Game, Part I

The rise in valuations of Big Biotech is due in large part to the fact that they're seen as affordable acquisition candidates for Big Pharmas in search of late-stage products. The plethora of early-stage biotech consolidation is, in contrast, generally a choice of last resort for otherwise unfinanceable companies who also can't sign worthwhile pharma deals. But the attention on late-stage programs offers opportunities for companies, like Pfizer, to strike platform technology deals which transfer technology, royalty free, from biotech to drug firm. The deals aren't cheap but these structures, impossible when platform deals were popular, allow Pfizer much greater research freedom.