The largest shareholder in major Japanese pharma firm Taisho, the founding Uehara family, intends to smooth the way to the restructuring and expansion of the business by acquiring and delisting all of its stock. The nearly $5bn size of the deal would makes it the biggest management buyout in Japanese corporate history.

Hyloris has received US approval for its generic podofilox gel, previously referred to as HY-016.

“A lot of companies are hurting because of the higher interest rates,” one major CEO observed recently, summing up a year which saw little headline-grabbing news on the M&A front for generic and biosimilar sponsors.

Money may have become too tight to mention for many biotechs and the IPO window in Europe is not just shut but boarded up. However, big pharma’s need to replenish the pipeline has become urgent and the major players are looking to tap into the continent’s early-stage companies which are driving innovation and provide them with much-needed cash.