On some interesting news I read a few months ago, Pfizer’s (a major pharmaceutical company) patent on its impotence drug Viagra has been partially rejected after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) said it wasn’t different enough from a Chinese herb called yin yang huo (more popularly known as Horny Goat Weed).
Yin Yang Huo (Horny Goat Weed)
In April of 2009, Pfizer agreed to buyout Wyeth for $68 billion; Pfizer’s market cap at that time was just around $100 billion. The following month Merck trumped the Pfizer deal with a $41 billion merger with Schering-Plough. What was Merck’s market cap at the time? – Roughly around $50 billion. Not to be outdone, Roche rounded-up the mega-mergers of 2009 (so far) with a $46.8 billion deal to acquire Genentech. However, it must be mentioned that Roche already had a majority stake in Genentech (55.8%), so we’re really talking about $46.8 billion for the remaining 44.2 % of Genentech it did not already own. (more…)