Midcap wake-up call

For years, it has been an open secret that many of Europe's family-owned mid-cap pharmas have been lost at sea, unable to adapt to the new world of innovative in-house R&D and aggressive in-licensing. Merck KGaA and Nycomed Group A/S took some dramatic steps to remedy the situation last week, announcing plans to acquire Serono S.A. and Altana AG's pharma businesses, respectively.

Merck (FSE:MRK, Darmstadt, Germany) already had started playing catch-up several years ago with the acquisition of European rights to ImClone Systems Inc.'s Erbitux cetuximab anti-EGFR antibody, but has had a couple of visible stumbles since then. Other mid-cap players have simply been out of the loop. ...