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Dealmaking 1996: The Year in Review

While the drug industry continued to shun acquisitions in favor of alliances, service and device companies see mergers as the only way to go. Can diagnostics, still stubbornly unconsolidated, be far behind?

When it comes to big pharmaceutical deals, merger and stock market activity seem to move inversely: the better the market, the lower the M&A activity, though the activity swings lag each other a bit. Drug companies go looking for cost-reducing and quickly-accretive mega-mergers when their stocks are in trouble; when stock prices are going up, M&A looks strategically diversionary or unnecessary--though little in the business environment has changed to make it any more diversionary or less necessary than it was when the market was down.

Thus the market boom of 1995-1996 saw a marked decline in the number of big mergers: six mergers topped $500...

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