Since 2000, more than 790000 mergers and acquisitions worth more than 56 trillion US dollars have been carried out worldwide. The peak in terms of the number and value of transactions occurred in 2021, when 49622 transactions totaling 3390 billion US dollars were made. Of these, most of the transactions (32.04%) were conducted in the USA, followed by the UK (8.08%). Also included in this list are countries such as China, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia and Sweden.
In general, pharmaceuticals, medicine and biotechnology were the fourth most active sector of mergers and acquisitions in 2022 among all sectors of the economy. This is due to the high investment attractiveness caused by the pandemic and COVID-19.
Thus, 2021 has become an innovative year for concluding deals in all industries, including in the field of healthcare. Global mergers and acquisitions in the pharmaceutical, medical and biotechnology sectors also remained robust in 2022, despite a general slowdown in mergers and acquisitions across the board. Figure 5 shows that in 2022, a total of 2,852 transactions totaling 375.1 billion US dollars were concluded in this sector, which is still above average, not counting 2021.
Thus, 2021 was characterized by a record number of transactions worth more than 5 billion US dollars, 20 of which were between large companies. There were 9 major deals in 2022, all of them focused on biotechnology, as large pharmaceutical companies rich in cash continued to benefit from the decline in value after the pandemic.
The largest of these deals included the acquisition of Horizon Pharma by Amgen for 28.3 billion US dollars, General Electric's announced the allocation of GE HealthCare Technologies for 22 billion US dollars, Johnson & Johnson announced a deal to buy ABIOMED, which produces heart pumps, for 19.3 billion US dollars, Pfizer acquired Biohaven biotech firm for 11.6 billion US dollars .
As for Pfizer, after the success of their COVID-19 vaccine, they sought to use acquisitions to expand their line of medicines and support the company's growth, and the biotech sector, with its normalizing valuations, turned out to be the ideal place. Pfizer also announced the acquisition of the American technology firm Global Blood Therapeutics (GBT) in August 2022 in order to replenish its range of medicines.
In January 2022, London-based Permira teamed up with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to acquire the merger of the Italian Kedrion with the British Bio Products Laboratory (BPL) in a deal worth 2.7 billion US dollars. Both companies develop, manufacture and commercialize therapeutic drugs from blood plasma. The annual revenue of the newly formed company will be about 1.1 billion euros, and its portfolio consists of 37 products and will cover more than 100 countries. Permira Funds have previously invested 4.2 billion euros in 18 healthcare investment projects, scaling some of the most innovative healthcare businesses around the world, including specialty pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, strategic outsourcing platforms and healthcare technologies. Previous investments in this sector have included Neuraxpharm, Quotient Sciences.
The healthcare sector has become very investment-attractive for private investment companies that seek to benefit after the pandemic. In 2022, a total of 914 transactions worth 128.4 billion US dollars were concluded with the participation of private investments, which exceeded the annual M market figures for other years, with the exception of 2021, when firms spent a record amount of money on mergers and acquisitions — 276.8 billion US dollars in 1,105 transactions in the pharmaceutical sector, medicine and biotechnology.
