Pfizer Wyeth deal and its impact on us

As news that Pfizer is near a deal to buy Wyeth for more than $60 billion in cash and stock has created a lot of buzz in the market.A combination of Pfizer and Wyeth, which has been long envisioned throughout the industry, would make Pfizer, already the world’s biggest drug company, even larger.Pfizer had revenue of more than $48 billion in 2007, and Wyeth’s sales exceeding $22 billion. Their combination would put pressure on rival companies to seek their own mergers as they are already getting impacted by a thinning pipeline of new products and a growing number of patent expirations. So what does it mean for Sanofi-Aventis, a new round of mergers and acquisations and some of the potential takeover candidates include the conventional drug giants Bristol-Myers and Schering-Plough and the biotechnology players Amgen and Biogen Idec.With the set-back of Acomplia, Plavix patent expiry nearing in 2011 which is expected to touch $8billion in sales by 2010 and focus of the new Obama administration to reduce the healthcare cost by replacing branded drugs with cheap generics could result in a significant revenue loss for the company. So i think a big-ticket acquisation is just on the cards.Even the new CEO has also cleared his intentions of acquiring other companies.And what does it mean for us here in India, well India is now in a strategic position for the company with its low cost production capacity and cheap clinical research capabilites. Further a big acquisation will result in the creation of lots of new opputinites for the current SA employees in India.So guys we have a tough but exciting time ahead.