Takeda and Millennium's recent out-sized tie-up reflects the different but real industry pressures from which both companies are suffering.Facing near-term patent exiprations of several key drugs, Takeda desperately needed to bulk up its R&D pipeline. Millennium, for its own part, was heavily dependent on the label expansion of its lead product, Velcade, as it struggled to maintain sustainable earnings growth and advance its early stage compounds through the clinic.

Branding works--in packaged goods and among investors. That's why, rather than taking Theravance's rich marketing deal with the Japanese company Astellas for the antibiotic telavancin -- rich in comparison to the best licensing deals signed in the segment -- as a net positive for the company, shareholders seemed disappointed.

Millennium Pharmaceuticals has been spending much of the new century building a development organization. Much of this nuts-and-bolts endeavor came out of its acquisition of Cor Therapeutics in 2001, a transforming transaction that has delivered only mixed results, and has now put the company on a hard-to-steer and equally hard-to-alter course.