I take your needless fear and I raise you a series of facts
@alhambraNovartis is on hand and a lot of detailed market and product assessment is required to negotiate a deal. That's understood.
You're completely overlooking the circumstances that when combined, involve a WIN/WIN opportunity.
That's winning for BOTH PARTIES, see?
That's the essence of long lasting commercial success, properly negotiated.
We have to go back to the big picture stuff to get some appreciation of what's really going on here.
Relative bargaining power is not just about who can force adverse outcomes on the other side.
If you have something the other side needs and wants, it raises your
positive power, see?
It's also relevant to ask
where are the synergies, and what are the opportunities for each?Moreover, how will this play out intelligently?
MSB and Cephalon negotiated intelligently and saw the synergies and together, negotiated international licensing deal of the year in 2010.
Then, short sighted and desperate, Teva launched a hostile takeover of Cephalon because they wanted what was in their stable. But they didn't understand what makes MSB unique, with stem cells.
What happened next is instructive.
Teva made a series of short-sighted unintelligent decisions, backing highly risky drug pharmaceutical trials unconnected with MSB. These failed spectacularly which forced them into chronically having to wind back exposure so they wound back on MSB.
Very foolish!
Teva's biggest mistake was not appreciating what makes MSB unique, in that most of the risk for patients is baked out, and the only thing that needs proof and refinement is efficacy. AND that large cohorts of patients is NOT required to prove efficacy and safety.
This is demonstrated by MSB's stem cells being rapidly moved to stages 2/3 due to next to zero risk to patient safety. New protocols were developed to handle the unique circumstances of safe stem cell manufacture and consistency.
Since then we have had complications with the FDA which has been widely outed as having problems with a range of issues, which include conflict of interest, ignoring their own expert committees etc. I am sure that with the right legal and co-operative response MSB will prevail with the difficulties. After all, we are the world leaders in the field, and also we aren't limited to the US market, we have EU approvals, and they will likely look at the FDA trials and not require repeats.
Back to the big picture:
Novartis is in a similar position to Cephalon, except they aren't in danger of being taken over, and nor is MSB. I have dealt with the reasons why in many other posts. Novartis is colossal and know their way around the FDA.
BIG difference.
My conclusion: MSB is on track to develop into the next CSL.
For some reason, there are some posters dedicated to tearing down careful analysis about why and replacing that with FEAR.
I cannot for the life of me, think why.
(Oh, wait...lol)
It almost goes without saying that Teva is now in the backwaters. They miscalculated in a colossal and costly way with their bone headed accounting fixations and risk taking.
(20min delay)