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Pfizer has agreed to buy Allergan, Plc for $160 billion:
US drugs giant Pfizer has agreed a deal to buy Botox-maker Allergan for $160bn (£106bn), making this the biggest pharmaceuticals deal in history. The merger will create the world's biggest drugmaker, to be called Pfizer.
Allergan shareholders will receive 11.3 shares in the merged company for each of their Allergan shares. Analysts have suggested the deal will allow Pfizer to escape relatively high US corporate tax rates by moving its headquarters to Dublin. Last year, Pfizer made an offer to buy UK drugs group AstraZeneca, which rejected the offer, arguing it undervalued the company.
Aside from Botox, Allergan also makes the Alzheimer's drug Namenda and dry-eye medication Restasis. Pfizer makes that-which-cannot-be-named, nerve pain treatment Lyrica, and pneumonia treatment Prevnar. According to the Wall Street Journal:
Pfizer said it expects to buy back about $5 billion in shares in the first half of next year under an accelerated program.
The merger will create a pharmaceutical behemoth, with top-selling products including Pfizer's Prevnar pneumonia vaccine and Allergan's anti-wrinkle treatment Botox and industry-topping R&D budget. The company's drugs and vaccines would cover a range of diseases, from Alzheimer's to cancer, eye health to rheumatoid arthritis.
The deal brings together two pharmaceutical powerhouses with more than $60 billion in combined sales. Last year, Actavis, which bought Allergan and took its name, had more than $13 billion in sales, while Pfizer had nearly $50 billion in revenue.
[...] Pfizer and Allergan said that after the deal closes, the combined company will decide on splitting into two businesses, one focused on patent-protected products and the other on drugs that have lost their patent protection or are close to losing it. It expects to make that decision by the end of 2018.
Related: Judge Rules Drug Maker Cannot Halt Sales of Alzheimer's Medicine - Drug maker Actavis, Plc tried to replace Namenda with a new, patented form. The company changed its name to Allergan, Plc by June 15, 2015.
(Score: 5, Informative) by fadrian on Tuesday November 24 2015, @02:49PM
How did a summary that long omit the one piece of the story that seems to be the lede in every other one? That this is yet another big tax inversion [wikipedia.org] dodge by a major American company.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by gringer on Tuesday November 24 2015, @05:43PM
If it wasn't there when you read the summary, it is now:
Analysts have suggested the deal will allow Pfizer to escape relatively high US corporate tax rates by moving its headquarters to Dublin. Last year, Pfizer made an offer to buy UK drugs group AstraZeneca, which rejected the offer, arguing it undervalued the company.
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]