RE:RE:EY sees bolt-ons in the single to double digit billions now Barrons reports that Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan is pursing a new US-focused strategy (on the fact that the US government is focused on bolstering the US biotechnology / biopharmaceutical industry by virtue of the recent POTUS executive order that seeks to secure the American Bioeconomy. Consequently, Novartis's CEO is now finding that M&A opportunities are hard to find due to the increased demand coming from other Big Pharma companies also looking to acquire innovative mid-late stage biopharmaceutical companies operating in the United States.
The Executive Order specifically stated that "inadquate competition holds back economic growth and innovation" and emanates from the fact that the "risk-adverse" pharmaceutical industry had worked to stifle innovation through the development and promotion of "me-too" and "follow-on" drugs that demonstrate only incremenatal innovation and benefit, and which differed little from the original compound - thus ensuring that safety and tolerability and side effects profile of the incremental products were predictable and similar to the original compound.
The Executive Order has sought to change the above status quo and to bring the "Moonshot" on cancer to fruition. Consequently, Big Pharma is now seeking innovative Biopharmaceutical products that can function as platform technologies like ONCY's multi-functional Immune Molecule Platform Technology (pelareorep) which has proven to be safe, and tolerable, with minimum side effects, in multiple populations exhibiting multiple cancers - both in liquid and solid tumor cancers. And as a result Big Pharma companies like Novartis are having a hard time finding M&A opportunities, and especially those kind with the innovation, safety, multifunctionality and efficacy that ONCY's pelareorep platform is able provide.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2022/09/12/executive-order-on-advancing-biotechnology-and-biomanufacturing-innovation-for-a-sustainable-safe-and-secure-american-bioeconomy/
https://www.barrons.com/articles/novartis-ceo-wall-street-expectations-big-pharma-drug-development-51664465422