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...The academics needed an industrial partner, but Mr Curstedt says that Pharmacia, a Swedish drugs company which has since become part of Pfizer, felt “the sales were too small and the marketing costs too...
...The sale of Meda risks a further hollowing out of Sweden’s pharmaceuticals sector, which in the past two decades has seen Pharmacia bought by Pfizer of the US and Astra merged with Zeneca of the UK....
...to Upjohn of the US and then Pfizer....
...When Pfizer took the company over in 2003, it had long ceased to have its headquarters in Sweden, with it having moved to first the UK and then the US as part of a 1995 merger with Upjohn of the US....
...Mr Heldin said foreign takeovers of both Astra and Pharmacia, which was first bought in 1995 by Upjohn of the US, had been “very bad” for Sweden....
...The company declined to comment on the Pharmacia deal....
...So has the independence of that country’s entire pharmaceutical sector, with Pharmacia absorbed by Pfizer of the US and Astra merged into AstraZeneca, based in the UK....
...Pfizer has led the consolidation, having become the world’s biggest drug company by swallowing up Warner Lambert, Pharmacia, Wyeth and others....
...The result of a larger company making more modest bets is that revenue growth will resemble a consumer goods company more than one that lives and dies by billion-dollar molecules....
...AstraZeneca was created in a £52bn ($102bn) deal in 1999; GlaxoSmithKline from a £120bn deal in 2001 while Pfizer launched a $53bn takeover of Pharmacia in 2003....
...Acquired when Pfizer bought Pharmacia in a takeover completed in 2000, Bextra, a painkiller in the same Cox-2 class as Merck’s Vioxx, was one of two drugs drawn to the attention of regulators and lawyers...
...Pfizer launched a $53bn takeover of Pharmacia in 2003 and Sanofi-Aventis was formed from a $64bn merger in 2004. But the megamerger strategy has failed to create value for shareholders....
...Some of these companies play in different areas....
...Its two deals made it the world’s largest pharmaceuticals company by sales....
...An alliance between the US pharmaceutical company Upjohn and the Swedish business Pharmacia ran into trouble when it became apparent that the cultures of the two parties were not compatible....
...Cinven beat off the competition to buy Phadia, the allergy-testing company, for €1.285bn including debt....
...As Ian Read, president of worldwide pharmaceutical operations, put it in his presentation to analysts on Monday, the aim is to reduce the cost base with a “return to pre-Pharmacia headcount” – a reference...
...This could damage the long-term growth potential of the company....
...Like the oil majors, pharmaceuticals companies constantly need to refill their pipelines to survive....
...But there may be as many risks as benefits in choosing such a structure, where past transatlantic deals – such as the combinations of drugmakers Pharmacia and Upjohn, drinks companies Guinness and GrandMet...
...The company, the world?...
...He says he saw it coming and moved Pharmacia’s headquarters from London to New Jersey in 1997. “I think in hindsight that move saved Pharmacia and Upjohn.”...
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