While it is true that such a deal would allow Pfizer to deploy most of that parked unrepatriated earnings, in a UK asset, to boot -- creating nice natural foreign exchange hedges in the process, such thinking cannot overcome the obvious and persistent downramp in AstraZeneca's sales (nor Pfizer's, either -- truth be told). [It is a lead-pipe cinch/certainty that since AZ rebuffed the reputed overture of a few weeks back, a hostile deal would simply not be possible -- not finance-able -- not on this scale, post 2009. . . .]
And we haven't even looked at antitrust. But that would be a bearcat. Here is a bit of Reuters, repeating the two-week old rumor -- do go read it all, just the same:
. . . .In the past Swiss drug firm Novartis and larger British peer GlaxoSmithKline have been mentioned as potential suitors, although GSK has publicly said it is not interested in making a large acquisition in recent years.
AstraZeneca, which announces first quarter results on Thursday, has a market valuation of around $80 billion, compared with Pfizer - valued at $193 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Earnings at AstraZeneca fell 6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013, and the drugmaker has said it expects them to keep falling in 2014 as generic competition to Nexium, its popular heartburn and ulcer drug, takes abig bite out of U.S. profits from late May.
AstraZeneca has suffered a dry period in drug discovery in recent years and badly needs to find new medicines to replace blockbusters such as Nexium and Crestor, a treatment for high cholesterol that will lose patent protection in a few years. . . .
All in, then -- this rumor has only scant meaning -- for the fortunes of Merck, and her Whitehouse Station/Kenilworth denizens. Separately, do recall that it is a near certainty AZ will announce Thursday it will take Nexium rights back in 2014 from the Merck joint venture. Happy Easter to one and all -- I'm off grid for the balance of the holiday (yep, egregiously over-eating).
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