Glaxo plans merger with Brystol Myers

Bristol Myers is only slightly behind in fifth place with a sales ranging up to 5.5 billion pound sterling.

Glaxo has been continuously linked with takeover speculation since the failure of its 100 billion pound sterling merger with another major British global company Smithkline Beecham last year.

The combined Glaxo-Squibb company would have sales more than 12 billion pound sterling and would be almost twice the size of Novartis and Merck, the current global market leaders.

Sir Richard Stykes, chairman of the Glaxo, has long maintained that his aim wasto create a company which would have ten per cent global market share and the current deal under negotiation would take him there.

Bristol Myers, which also has strong presence in the Indian market, showed a whooping eleven per cent growth last year and specialises in marketing Taxol, the world’s best selling cancer drug.

The merger talks between the two global pharmaceutical giants follows the new trend in the major global companies of going in for huge mergers to corner market share. In recent months, another major British drug company, Zeneca merged with its Swedish rival Astra and Hoechst of Germany went in for alliance with French Rhone-Poulenc.

Stykes said that global mega mergers were being fuelled to meet astronomical research costs of genetic research, which would revolutionise the approach to medicine world.