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Small company mergers—good for whom?

Nature Biotechnology volume 24, pages 1343–1348 (2006)Cite this article

An analysis of 105 mergers among small UK biotech companies over a 10-year period shows that the improvement of shareholder positions, rather than product pipelines or business opportunities, is the main motivation for such transactions.

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Figure 1: Trends in UK biotech mergers over a decade.
Figure 2: Merger trees for Celltech and Vernalis, two biotechs that exemplify large UK firms.
Figure 3: How different are small biotech companies that merge with one another versus biotech companies in general?
Figure 4: Profile differences before and after merging.
Figure 5: Success after a merger.
Figure 6: How often do merging companies have shareholders in common? 'Real-world' data from mergers between two private entities (Actual private; 21 companies) or mergers between a private and a public entity (Actual public; 18 companies) are presented together with estimates based on what would be expected from random pairings of the 39 companies that merged (Estimate - mergers) or from random pairings of 143 European biotech companies receiving institutional investment in the period of 2002–2005 (Estimate - investors).

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Richards for detailed insight into the evolution of Celltech, and members of Eastern Region Biotechnology Initiative (Cambridge, UK) for answering questions during the Eastern Region Biotechnology Initiative Conference in 2005. The opinions in this paper should not necessarily be attributed to them. This paper is based on work submitted by V.M. as a thesis requirement for the Master of Philosophy degree in Bioscience Enterprise, Cambridge University, UK.

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  1. Röper Laboratory, The Wellcome Trust–Cancer Research UK, Gurdon Institute of Cancer and Developmental Biology, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge, CB2 1QN, UK

    Vanessa Maybeck & William Bains

  2. Rufus Scientific, 37 The Moor, Melbourn, SG8 6ED, Herts, UK

    Vanessa Maybeck & William Bains

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Maybeck, V., Bains, W. Small company mergers—good for whom?. Nat Biotechnol 24, 1343–1348 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt1106-1343

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