Pfizer To Acquire Wyeth in $68 Billion Blockbuster Deal

Negotiations continued into Sunday night, with an anticipated announcement on Monday that Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker of products like Lipitor and Viagra, agreed in principle to acquire a rival, Wyeth, for $68 billion. The deal would create the largest pharmaceutical company in the world and it would be the first big acquisition that is not a desperate merger of two banks orchestrated by the government in over six months. It would be the biggest merger in three years, since AT&T acquired BellSouth.

Five banks have agreed to lend Pfizer more than $25 billion to pay for the deal, four of which received bailout money: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America. In addition, Barclays, which acquired Lehman Brothers out of bankruptcy in the fall, is also providing financing. Pfizer, which has $26 billion in cash and equivalents, would finance the remainder through a combination of cash and stock.

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plez sez: have you tried to get a loan in the last four months? will your bank lend you $680,000, $68,000, or even $680?!?

this acquisition - which sickens plezWorld - that the bailout was a remnant of reaganomics... that failed trickle down economics b.s.! pfizer will fire sales reps and feather their bottom-line until they shore up their drug pipeline and their fat cat CEO will continue to smell like a rose... and the wyeth CEO will get the most golden of parachutes!

there is a joke in this deal about viagra and pfizer having a hard-on for wyeth for more than four hours, but this is no laughing matter! i'm going to have to go have a long hard look at Obama's stimulus package to see if it is something that plezWorld can continue to support... where you at, RawDawg?

~ ~ Citations ~ ~

Read the New York Times article about Pfizer acquisition of Wyeth.

Read the CNN Money article about Pfizer's $68 billion deal for Wyeth.

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Merck Agrees to $4.85 Billion to Settle Vioxx Claims

The NY Times reports that Pharmaceutical giant Merck has agreed to pay $4.85 billion to settle 27,000 lawsuits by people who claim they or their family members suffered injury or died after taking the drug, according to two lawyers with direct knowledge of the matter. Based on the fact that the 27,000 suits cover about 47,000 sets of plaintiffs, the average plaintiff will receive just over $100,000 before legal fees and expenses, which usually swallow between 30 and 50 percent of payments to plaintiffs.

Merck withdrew Vioxx from the market in September 2004, after a clinical trial proved that it increased the risks of heart attacks and strokes. But internal company documents showed that Merck’s scientists were concerned about the risks of Vioxx several years earlier. And a large clinical trial that ended in 2000 also showed that Vioxx was much riskier than naproxen, an older painkiller sold under the name Aleve.

Read the entire story here.


plez sez: do the math people... if a plaintiff settles, all they can expect to get is between $50,000 and $70,000 after legal fees. this appears to be a no-win situation for the poor people who were adversely affected by this drug.