Even before the $16 billion superdeal by Amgen Inc. for Immunex Corp. materialized three large deals in the first week in December, representing almost $4 billion worth of biotech M&A, have firmly defined—in case anyone needed any help understanding—that biotech is a product industry. Biotechs are simply small pharmaceutical companies, in business to sell products. They don't have to invent them or develop them. They do have to sell them.
Indeed, the once-clear distinction between discovery-based biotechs and specialty in-licensing companies is dissolving. Both groups fill their pipelines with compounds...
