Europe based leading pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca Plc. (LON: AZN) will be purchasing fellow U.S based pharmaceutical company Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ALXN) in a deal worth $39 Billion, this will be the largest deal ever inked by AstraZeneca.
This acquisition will help AstraZeneca to expand both its immunology and oncology businesses as well as expand its research on rare diseases.
“It is a tremendous opportunity for us to accelerate our development in immunology, getting into a new segment of disease, a new segment of physicians, and patients we haven’t been able to cover so far,” said AstraZeneca’s CEO Pascal Soriot.
The company said Alexion shareholders will receive $60 in cash and an additional $115 worth of equity per each share of the company. These payments will be made in either AstraZeneca’s ordinary shares traded in the London Stock Exchange or in dollar-denominated American Depositary Shares.
Additionally, the CEO said boards of both companies had approved the deal hence it’s expected to close it in the third quarter of 2021.
This announcement comes at a time when AstraZeneca is furthering research to establish whether its COVID-19 vaccine could be 90% effective. At some point the company was seen as a front runner to race of finding a vaccine for the deadly virus but the company has now fallen behind Pfizer’s Inc. (FPE) and BioNTech as well as Moderna’s Inc. (MRNA) vaccines which have shown far much more promising results.
