The top 10 biopharma M&A deals in 2021

Biopharma merger and acquisition (M&A) activity was subdued in 2021, and it would have approached a record low for recent years but for a flurry of deals in the last quarter.

The top 10 biopharma M&A deals last year reached a combined value of just under $53 billion, well down from the $97 billion tally in 2020 and a fraction of the $207 billion spent on the 10 largest transactions in 2019.

The downward trend comes against the backdrop of a crop of mega-mergers in 2019—including Bristol-Myers Squibb/Celgene, Takeda/Shire and AbbVie/Allergan—which took six fairly active players in biopharma M&A out of action, for a while at least.