Merger and acquisition between small biotech and large pharmaceutical companies - a winning combination? : Case study on the acquisitions of CAT by AstraZeneca and Abgenix by Amgen; MBA thesis in marketing

Abstract: This study aims at introducing and describing a novel multi parameter analysis method to identify potential acquisition targets and to qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate the overall match between a target company and its acquirer. The method was tested with two recent real cases involving each an antibody based biotech company and a large fully integrated pharmaceutical company. The model was validated by comparing two independent antibody companies against the real cases, testing if they would have made better targets. It was found out that the in reality acquired companies scored highest, thus proving the validity of the method. One of the four potential targets got the highest scores for both acquirers. Consequently one of the acquired targets was only the second best match. The still independent companies would not have been better targets. The lowest scoring target company did get identical scores for both acquiring companies. Despite the proper prediction of targets, the scoring did not reveal the true underlying motives for the acquisitions, nor could significant parameters be identified to discriminate between target and non-target. This study adds a novel, valuable tool to the still limited arsenal of methods to qualitatively and quantitatively measure a match between target and acquirer solely based on publicly available data.