Abstract

The strong M&A activity that emerged in 2014 was maintained in 2015, driven by the pursuit of growth and the availability of cheap debt finance. Pharmaceutical companies continued to offload non-core assets and were willing to pay sizeable premiums to acquire key late stage programmes, while consolidation in the generics sector persisted. On average,licensing upfront payments and deal values fell in 2015 relative to 2014, although they still remained robust. For the third year running, AstraZeneca was the most prolific deal maker, this time by some margin, although Pfizer topped the rankings in terms of deal spend. Oncology, and the field of immuno-oncology in particular, continued to dominate the dealmaking landscape, although there was some noteworthy early-stage deal activity for novel biological programmes across a variety of therapy areas.

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