Newer Companies Shaking Up the Pharma Industry, Reports WSJ

Actavis, Endo International, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Mylan and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries are pharma's new "movers and shakers", according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). "Combined," Jonathan D. Rockoff and Joseph Walker write, "these lesser-known players have signed or proposed takeovers worth a combined $180 billion in recent months".   WSJ reports that they have also become "major revenue generators, racking up some $52 billion in combined sales last year, up 86% from 2010." Actavis's market value of more than $119 billion is a 22-fold increase on 2010; Valeant’s $84.73 billion is 32 times larger than five years ago. Mylan is now the second-biggest seller of generic drugs in the U.S. after Teva, with revenue of $7.8 billion in 2014.   Rockoff and Walker point out that the staggering success of these companies is due to a number of factors such as low borrowing costs, the relocation to lower-tax haven countries such as Ireland, and the far that several of the new chief executives come from outside the pharmaceutical industry, "making them unsympathetic toward some of the sector’s traditions, such as heavy research spending".   For more click here.