The new sweet spot for biotech buyouts: $1B to $2B

While today's P&G deal underscores that big leveraged buyouts may be returning to favor, Dow Jones went looking for the sweet spot in biotech takeovers. And they landed in the rich field of developers with promising late-stage products in the pipeline that can fetch a bid of $1 billion to $2 billion.

Who qualifies for that profile? The newswire pegs Human Genome Sciences, InterMune and Theravance as likely targets. Medarex, Sciele, CV Therapeutics and Alpharma all sold in that range in the past year. And it's unlikely that the players in the game now are likely to try and match the big mega-mergers that Roche, Pfizer and Merck have all pulled off.

An increase in M&A activity combined with the first stirrings of positive news on the IPO front would help underscore a sense that the biotech industry is on the comeback trail.

- read the report from the Wall Street Journal

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