12 of the world's largest drugmakers in ten years to break up nearly 40 research and development pharmaceutical companies ...

"Long time must be combined, long time must be divided."
for pharmaceutical companies, every strategic shift is mostly to make the overall structure of the enterprise more suitable for future business development.
especially for large pharmaceutical companies, which used to move towards diversification, but now the focus has become the industry consensus, the divestiture of non-core parts is an industry trend.
divestiture is a common business operation in contrast to mergers and acquisitions.
like mergers and acquisitions, divestitures can be for products/research and development pipelines, business segments, or companies.
the reasons for the divestiture are nothing more than wanting to focus more on themselves, or on developing the spin-off business.
if the part you want to divest is temporarily unseeded or unwilling to transfer, it is simply split up and run independently or even go public.
39 companies were spun off: AstraZeneca was more successful among the spin-offs, with Merck being the most active of the major big drugmakers in the Evaluate Vantage statistics, which focused on identifiable companies driven by large drugmakers as parent companies, and which also involved spin-offs of research and development companies rather than simply divestitures between business units and listed products.
Chart 1: Overview of "derivative companies" of major pharmaceutical companies Source: Evaluate Pharma, China Health Industrial Capital Research Center, 39 such companies are on an independent path, mostly split from 12 of the world's largest drugmakers in the past 10 years, both in terms of parent companies and split times.
10 have been successfully listed, eight are still private, 11 have been acquired and the remaining 10 are either bankrupt or no longer appear active.
about a third of the 39 companies have successfully listed, which is impressive, since most were set up in early projects.
, though, is perhaps not surprising, because these drugmakers are willing to spend time and money setting up a new company, with a good chance of seeing its future potential.
, in order to better focus on their core business, focus on doing great things, can only disguise the "abandonment" of this part.
, all three AstraZeneta spin-offs have been listed and are a more "successful spin-off".
June, Viela Bio's anti-CD19 monoclonal antibody Uplizna was approved by the FDA for use in the treatment of patients with optic neurospinal cord disease spectrum disorder (NMOSD).
for a company that only started in 2018, achieving this is not easy.
, it also marks a successful transition from research and development to the market with Vila Bio, a spin-off of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneta.
Bio is a biotechnology company dedicated to developing innovative therapies for autoimmune and severe inflammatory diseases.
In February 2018, AstraZeneta announced that it would spin off Viela Bio into an independent biotech company, and in October 2019, Viela Bio logged on to NASDAQ.
, two other companies have been spind off from AstraZeneta, Albireo and Entasis.
, which was split from AstraZeneta in 2008 to focus on the development and potential commercialization of new bile acid regulators, was founded in 2015 with AstraZenecon's start-up capital and some of its research and development platform mandates to discover and develop new antimicrobial products.
both are listed on NASDAQ and have products in Clinical Phase III.
is arguably one of the more successful big drugmakers in splitting up its "unwanted" assets and building new companies.
note that Merck KGaA is by far the most enthusiastic spin-off, according to a review of spin-offs of the world's biggest drug companies by Evaluate Vantage.
in the past decade, it has built nine young start-ups, though not all of them still exist today.
as early as 2012, Merck's biotech division, Merck Sherano, pledged to provide seeds to a number of companies after slashing costs and restructuring its research and development division in Geneva.
this led to a series of spin-offs, which included Asceneuron, Calypso Biotech and iOnctura, which are still in the early stages of development;
break-up could revitalise the business, with more investors involved in driving the formation of new companies.
a decade ago, the "break-up" campaign was largely driven by the parent company, which would fund and staff new companies and, of course, often bring in external partners to finance them.
In the case of Vila Bio, chief executive Bing Yao was originally head of astray's respiratory, inflammatory and autoimmune (RIA) innovative drug unit in AstraZeneta's medical immunity division and was later appointed to lead the start-up, together with several other AstraZeneta employees;
, Albireo and Entasis have adopted similar operating models.
, start-ups like Impact Biomedicines were set up to continue developing the cancer drug fedratinib, which Sanofi has abandoned.
john Hood, the company's founder and co-inventor of the drug, founded Impact Biomedicines in 2016 after hearing that Sanofi had abandoned the development of fedratinib, taking back development rights from Sanofi for almost nothing and getting $22 million in financing from venture capital firm Mediaxi.
the latter is a strong supporter of the so-called "asset-centric" investment model.
as far as Sanofi is concerned, while it retains a stake in Impact, the formation of Impact has been driven by outside forces.
view, the new companies that are now being spind off have more participants and forms of development than ever before, especially attracting the attention of investors.
is "dismantled" does not mean that it no longer has investment value.
, splitting a business that doesn't fit the company's strategy into a separate company might be a better way to revitalise that part of the business.
, that doesn't mean investors should rush to support the spin-off of big pharmaceutical companies.
that while nine of the 39 companies in the data have products on the market, there have been few real business success stories.
table below lists notable spin-off companies, most of which have spent years achieving their current results.
Chart 2: Partial Spin-Off Success Story Source: EvaluatePharma, China Health Industrial Capital Research Center In general, in the focus on becoming a global pharmaceutical industry trend, for pharmaceutical companies, the split after the easy start of the horse whipping is actually a good idea.
and now influenced by policy and other factors, the valuation differentiation between innovative pharmaceutical and generic drug companies has intensified, and the focus on "innovation" in particular can lead to higher valuations in capital markets.
for the new company that was taken apart, being independent could reawaken the new dynamics of the section.
: 1, Big pharma spinouts grow up.