2020 Deal-Making Snapshot: A Busy Year For Bolt-Ons

In biopharmaceutical deal-making, 2020 was a busy year on both the M&A and partnering front. Not surprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic drove a significant amount of collaborations during the year, pushing infectious disease past cancer as the therapeutic area with the greatest deal volume. While infectious disease yielded 371 alliance deals during 2020, according to Biomedtracker, COVID-19 was the focus of 204 of those deals.

The industry recorded roughly 50% more biopharma M&A transactions during 2020 compared to the prior year, but those deals yielded much lower aggregate upfront value and an average deal value well below half the value of an M&A deal in 2019