Posted on 08/03/2026 4:19:30 AM PDT by Red Badger
Investing.com -- AstraZeneca PLC (LON:AZN) shares fell nearly 7% in London trading on Monday after a report said the drugmaker has held merger discussions with Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY), a potential combination that would create a pharmaceutical giant worth almost $400 billion.
AstraZeneca's London-listed shares fell 6.7% to 11,804 pence, while the FTSE 100 was little changed. Bristol Myers rose 2.7% in pre-market trading after closing Friday at $65.31, just shy of a 52-week high and its highest level since June 22, 2023.
A combined entity would carry a value of nearly $400 billion, which would rank it among the world's largest pharmaceutical groups. AstraZeneca holds a market capitalisation of approximately $264 billion, while Bristol Myers Squibb adds roughly $133 billion.
The FT, citing people familiar with the matter, said the discussions took place over recent months but cautioned that talks could be delayed or fall apart entirely. No deal structure has been disclosed, and neither company provided comments or shared a statement.
AstraZeneca's NYSE-listed shares ended Friday's session at $169.64, down $1.70 on the day, and sit more than $40 below their 52-week high of $212.71. Bristol Myers Squibb, meanwhile, closed Friday at $65.31, a whisker from its own 52-week high of $65.66 printed intraday on above-average volume of 14.58 million shares.
BMY has gained roughly 47.7% over the past year, driven in part by a strong second quarter: the company reported Q2 2026 EPS of $2.04, beating consensus of $1.61, on revenue of $12.97 billion, topping estimates of $11.71B.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
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My brother had a job with AstraZeneca before he retired (a late-life job as a bridge to retirement) and from his description, that company is nauseatingly woke and evil.
The way he described them to me was like a Dilbert cartoon, except the main focus was less incompetence and stupidity and more in line with wokeness and malice.
It may not be appropriate, but mergers between large, but not top dog competitors often produce mediocre results.
Years ago, Barron’s ran an editorial about the merger of Sperry and Borroughs, two mainframe makers that were losing out to IBM and to the burgeoning mini-computer makers of the time, such as DEC. The merger was touted as “The Power of Two.”
Barron’s then editor, Alan Abelson, said, sometimes if you take two walking wounded and tie them together, all you wind up with is one big bloated corpse. Which, indeed is what happened a few years down the road.
The idea is to merge two companies, keep all their existing products, fire all/most of a BMY employees, and eventually raise prices for the said products. We’ve seen this movie before… many times….all Pfizer mergers were done like that.
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