It is difficult not to see yesterday’s licensing deal between Vertex (NASDAQ:VRTX) and Merck KGaA (MGKAF) (MGKAY) as a decent match. The US biotech had made clear its desire to get out of whatever oncology assets it still owned, while cancer forms the cornerstone of the German company’s R&D resurrection plan.
The only thing at issue, then, is the $230m up-front fee – an amount that looks rich given that only one of the projects has so far generated even early-stage clinical data. Then again, the assets’ targets are particularly relevant for Merck, and as a bonus they appear to face very little industry competition.
As icing on the cake the groups timed the deal for maximum impact by revealing it at this week’s JPMorgan healthcare conference. However, any share price accretion was negated by the across-sector slump caused by the US president-elect’s comments about pharmaceutical price controls.
