J.P. Morgan Stockwatch: No Substitute For M&A

While stock markets toyed with all-time highs despite the impeachment of the president, over on the West Coast things were less rosy. There was a plethora of announcements to coincide with the first few days of the 2020 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, but in retrospect it was naive to expect the acquisition pace of December 2019 to continue into January 2020. The rare big acquisitions that have headlined or preceded previous conferences, like those of Celgene Corp. and Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd. were absent and failing to fill this void was the news on clinical, commercial and regulatory events. (Also see "Bristol/Celgene A Record-Setting Merger, If It Happens" - Scrip, 4 January, 2019.) (Also see "J&J’s $30bn For Actelion Buys Immediate And Longer-Term Value" - Scrip, 26 January, 2017.)

The announcement of the launch of a new $200m private company – EQRx – designed to develop me-too drugs to undercut and disrupt the pricing model on innovator pharmaceutical molecules did not raise the tempo of the conference. (Also see "EQRx Aims To Upend Industry’s Pricing Model, With Me-Too Drugs" - Scrip, 12 January, 2020.) There was some logic to this as EQRx is headed by Alexis Borisy, the founder of CombinatoRx. While CombinatoRx had a few positive announcements in its short existence, its clinical failures, cost-cutting and role as a cash shell for the reverse merger of a Canadian biotech company were not amongst them