Pfizer is close to publicly unveiling its interest in acquiring AstraZeneca of Britain, a person briefed on the matter said on Sunday, in what would be one of the biggest in an already swelling series of deal efforts among drug makers.
Such a deal would likely be worth more than $100 billion, given AstraZeneca’s current market capitalization of roughly $86 billion. That would make it one of the largest-ever acquisition efforts in the pharmaceutical industry, surpassing Pfizer’s $90 billion takeover of Warner-Lambert 14 years ago.
Pfizer could declare its interest in taking over its rival within days, this person said. Such a move would be aimed at putting pressure on the British drug maker, which has turned down a number of informal takeover approaches from its competitor, including in recent months.
The pharmaceutical industry has helped push deal activity to heights unseen since before the financial crisis of 2008. On April 22 alone, drug makers unveiled $74 billion worth of potential deals, including the potential takeover of the maker of Botox and a complicated series of asset swaps between Novartis of Switzerland and GlaxoSmithKline of Britain.
These companies have been driven to deals in many cases to find new areas of growth as onetime blockbuster treatments lose patent protection. Instead of pouring money into researching new products that could sputter out, they are looking to buy more what they hope are likely winners.
To Pfizer, AstraZeneca may be attractive because of its portfolio of cancer drugs, an area that the American company has also made a priority as it seeks to restock its product pipeline.
A takeover bid for the British company would also let Pfizer use some of the cash that it keeps abroad without incurring a big tax bill. The company has disclosed holding about $69 billion in earnings from international subsidiaries as of Dec. 31.
But the board of AstraZeneca had viewed the previous approaches as opportunistic and ill timed, with too small a takeover premium, according to a person briefed on those discussions. The British drug maker has tried to improve its fortunes on its own, trying to reverse declines in sales and profits because of the loss of patent protection on some of its best-selling treatments and setbacks in developing new drugs.
News of Pfizer’s intentions was reported earlier by The Financial Times.
