How much is anti-aging worth? If today’s acquisition of Allergan, parent company of products including Latisse, Juvéderm and Botox, is any indication—a cool $160 billion dollars.
In the biggest health-care acquisition ever, Pfizer announced Monday that it will buy Allergan in a record-breaking deal to form the world’s largest pharmaceutical company. The merged company will be known as Pfizer Plc and continue to be led by Pfizer’s CEO, Ian Read. Allergan’s CEO, Brent Saunders, will shift to a COO role and all board members from both companies will stay on.
What does this mean for consumers? In a conference call with investors, Saunders said that the merger would allow Allergan to expand sales of its products internationally to about 70 additional markets and launch up to a dozen new products. In addition, the company says that the merger will lead to more resources for an even stronger R&D department. As for how it may affect prices of the popular injectables—that remains too early to tell.
The deal, however, is not without its controversies. As part of the acquisition, New York-based Pfizer will re-incorporate in Allergan’s headquarter city, Dublin, Ireland—and in the process, significantly cut its U.S. corporate tax bill. Such strategies, called inversion deals, have been coined “unpatriotic” by President Obama, and in recent years, his administration has tried to crack down on the practice. Whether or not the deal actually gets finalized, however, is still contingent on approval from both U.S. and European antitrust regulators.
